Calle de Argumosa

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The street takes the surname Argumosa, with a historiographical dispute over which of the two honoured figures it refers to: the jurist Wenceslao de Argumosa y Bourke (1761-1831), according to Peñasco, Cambronero and Bravo Morata; or the surgeon Diego Manuel de Argumosa y Obregón (1792-1865), according to Pedro de Répide, whose case is strengthened by the street’s closeness to the old Royal College of Surgery of San Carlos, where Argumosa was a professor for twenty-five years.

They call it “the boulevard of Lavapiés”, and one walk is enough to understand the nickname: calle de Argumosa is the widest street in the maze, a generous exception in a district of narrow alleys. It runs from the plaza de Lavapiés to the Ronda de Atocha, and today some twenty bars crowd its pavements. Behind the name stands Diego Manuel de Argumosa y Obregón (1792-1865), “the Restorer of Spanish Surgery”, a professor at the nearby College of Surgery of San Carlos —⁠the same building that now houses the Reina Sofía Museum. On 13 January 1847 he introduced inhalation anaesthesia into Spain with the most homemade of instruments: a cow’s bladder filled with ether and a metal cannula. The name landed in the right place, beside the medical axis that gathered hospitals and surgery colleges in the 19th century. Its unusual width, so surprising in the narrow-streeted Lavapiés, is exactly what lets it host so many people around a table.

Its names

  • Sin nombre propio documentadoSiglo 16th - ca. 1869
  • Vía en formación / sin rótulo fijoCa. 1869 - finales 19th century
  • Calle de ArgumosaFinales 19th century - actualidad
Sources (12)

Crossings