Calle de Blasco de Garay

On 17 June 1543, in the port of Barcelona, a two-hundred-ton ship called the Trinidad moved without oars or sails before a commission appointed by Charles I. It was driven by paddle wheels on both sides, worked by the strength of several men. The man behind it was Blasco de Garay, naval captain and inventor who for years had tried out devices to propel vessels. Three centuries later, the test became something else. In the 19th century the idea spread that Garay had invented steam navigation and that Spain had squandered the discovery. The legend took firm root, though no document of the time mentions a boiler: the real invention was the wheels and their gearing, not the steam that posterity chose to add. Calle de Blasco de Garay runs through Chamberí from north to south, linking the Arapiles district with Gaztambide.