Avenida de los Toreros
The avenue replaced the name Calle de Julián Marín in 1931, the year of the first bullfight at Las Ventas, whose northern flank it skirts. The change honors the bullfighting trade as a whole, not any particular matador; the date of 1953 proposed by a blog has no primary source.
Where the villas of La Guindalera stand today there were orchards. The neighborhood began to be developed in 1874, and around 1888 two men dreamed of something new: the architect and entrepreneur Julián Marín and the landowner Mariano Santos Pinela devised a colony of affordable Neo-Mudéjar villas, christened Madrid Moderno. The street that closed it off to the north bore for years the name of its promoter: calle de Julián Marín.
In 1931 it became the Avenida de los Toreros. The date has its mystery: it is also said the change happened in 1953, though that figure circulates with no documentary backing.
The name honors the whole trade, not one particular bullfighter, because the avenue hugs the northern flank of a neighbor impossible to ignore: Las Ventas. The ring was finished in 1929 and its first bullfight took place on 17 June 1931. Anyone walking the avenue to the end comes out onto Calle de Roberto Domingo, dedicated to the bullfighting illustrator. The ring ends, on the map, where the man who drew it begins.
Its names
- Calle de Julián Marínc. 1890–1931 (o c. 1890–1953)