Of the Calle De La Quemada by Thomas A. Janvier

Not knowing what they are talking about, Senor, many people will tell you that the Street of the Burned Woman got its name because -- in the times when the Holy Office was helping the goodness of good people by making things very bad for the bad ones -- a woman heretic most properly and satisfactorily was burned there. Such is not in the least the case. The Quemadero of the Inquisition -- where such sinners were burned, that their sins might be burned out of them -- was nowhere near the Calle de la Quemada: being at the western end of what now is the Alameda, in quite a different part of the town. Therefore it is a mistake to mix these matters: and the real truth is that this beautiful young lady did herself destroy her own beauty by setting fire to it; and she did it because she wanted to do it -- that in that way she might settle some doubts which were in her heart. It all happened in the time of the good Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco: and so you will perceive, Senor, that this story is more than three hundred years old.

The name of this beautiful young lady who went to such lengths for her heart's assuring was Dona Beatrice de Espinosa; and the name of her father was Don Gonzalo de Espinosa y Guevra -- who was a Spanish rich merchant who came to make himself still richer by his buyings and his sellings in New Spain. Being arrived here, he took up his abode in a fine dwelling in the quarter of San Pablo, in the very street that now is called the Street of the Burned Woman because of what presently happened there; and if that street was called by some other name before that cruel happening I do not know what it was.