Calle de Adela Balboa
Recalls Adela Balboa y Gómez, a nineteenth-century Madrid lady whose bequest built a hospital for the city’s poor sick.
Adela Balboa y Gómez (1852-1890) had no children to leave her fortune to, so she left it to the sick of Madrid. In her will she set aside most of her estate to found a Casa de Salud that would treat the poorest free of charge. She died at thirty-eight during an operation, without seeing the work rise.
The hospital took shape years later in the north of the city, with four pavilions around a chapel and a garden, and bore the name of San José y Santa Adela in memory of the benefactress. Later it passed to the Red Cross and turned to caring for the wounded of the war in Morocco.
Calle de Adela Balboa runs between Garellano and Castillo Piñeiro, in Bellas Vistas. A hundred metres of street for a fortune spent entirely on curing strangers.