The Corrala & the Ruins of the Escuelas Pías
Why is it significant?
Turn to face the tall building with its side wide open to the street, floor after floor of long wooden balconies running around an inner courtyard, doors in a row, washing lines strung between them. This is a corrala, and this particular one is the most famous in Madrid.
Key Facts
| Place | The Corrala & the Ruins of the Escuelas Pías |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle del Mesón de Paredes 79, 28012 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.40790, -3.70260 |
| Part of Walk | Tapas, Tripe and the Sunday Rastro: La Latina & Lavapiés, Madrid's Old Popular Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
Turn to face the tall building with its side wide open to the street, floor after floor of long wooden balconies running around an inner courtyard, doors in a row, washing lines strung between them. This is a corrala, and this particular one is the most famous in Madrid.
Corralas were the answer to a housing crisis. In the nineteenth century, workers poured into Madrid from the countryside, and builders squeezed them into blocks like this: dozens of tiny flats, each opening onto a shared gallery, with a single water tap and shared toilets at the end of the corridor. Privacy did not exist. Your neighbours knew what you cooked, who you argued with and when you came home. The neighbouring building that once hid this corrala's side was pulled down, and so we can see its galleries from the street, like a doll's house cut open.
That openness made it a stage. The corrala was the natural setting of the zarzuela, Madrid's own light opera, full of washerwomen, jealous lovers and neighbours shouting from balcony to balcony, and for years this courtyard has served as a backdrop for open-air performances. In 1977 the building was declared a national monument, which is quite an honour for what was once considered a slum.
Now turn around. The roofless arches and walls across the little square belong to the church of the Escuelas Pías de San Fernando, a school founded by the Piarist fathers in the eighteenth century. It was burned in 1936, at the start of the Civil War, and stood as a ruin for decades. Around 2002 architects did something unusual: instead of rebuilding it, they put a modern library inside the ruin, for a distance-learning university, keeping the scarred walls visible.
On Sundays, the corrala used to smell of cocido from every door at once. Now follow the street a short way east and slightly uphill into the square that gave this whole quarter its name, the Plaza de Lavapiés.