Calle de Arlabán

At the heights of Arlabán in 1836, the Isabelline troops — with Espartero and the British Auxiliary Legion among their ranks — clashed with the Carlist positions. Of those engagements, the action of May left the most vivid memory. Madrid wished to commemorate the victory and renamed a lane that had borne another name: the travesía de los Gitanos. So that alley came to carry the name of a battle in the Pyrenees. Here, too, opened one of the doors of the café de la Iberia, a famous progressive gathering place of the nineteenth century.

In 1912, the young Andrés Segovia visited Manuel Ramírez’s lutherie workshop at number 10 of this street to rent a guitar before a concert at the Ateneo de Madrid; after hearing him play, Ramírez chose to give it to him instead. That instrument, which Segovia used in concerts until 1937 —⁠including his New York debut in 1929⁠—⁠, is kept today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.