Calle de Calvo Asensio

This street was called Marconell, after an old outlying quarter of Chamberí that the street map gradually erased. The council changed its name in March 1887 to recall Pedro Calvo Asensio. He was born in Mota del Marqués, in the province of Valladolid, in 1821. He studied pharmacy, but soon traded the apothecary’s shop for the pen. He wrote comedies and dramas for Madrid’s theaters and founded newspapers before launching La Iberia in 1854, which in his hands became one of the century’s most influential dailies and a mouthpiece of the Progressive Party. From there he moved into politics, as a deputy and a recognized voice of progressivism in the Cortes. When he died in 1863, barely forty-two, it was his friend Sagasta who took the reins of La Iberia. At number 4 of the street lived, in another century, the writer Ramón del Valle-Inclán.