While this street has little remarkable about it at present, it does have an interesting history.
The name of this street has its origin in the Counter Reformation, the Catholic Church’s fightback against the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent (1545-63) established strict standards for the education of priests, which seminaries in Ireland struggled to meet. This was exacerbated by Pius V’s decision in 1570 to excommunicate Elizabeth I and to urge Catholics in England and Ireland to resist her rule. Elizabeth’s previous policy of relative toleration was replaced by a series of increasingly draconian anti-Catholic statutes, which made it impossible for Irish priests to be educated at home, and Irish colleges began to spring up around Europe, principally in Spain and France.
While there had been Irish communities attending European colleges from the 1540’s, the first Irish College was established in Salamanca in 1592. The first official presence in Madrid was in 1590, when Philip II granted 100 ducats for Irish seminarians to attend court. St. Joachim and St. Anne’s College, Madrid was founded in 1629 by Theobald Stapleton, an Irish priest who had founded the Irish College in Seville in 1612. (Stapleton was executed by Cromwellian soldiers during the Sack of Cashel in 1649).
The college was located in a building on the corner of Calle del Humilladero and Calle des Irlandeses, and this was followed by a church, dedicated to St. Patrick and a hospital at the same location.
The church was looted by French troops during Napoleon’s occupation, and was burned down during the Civil War.