Calle de Carlos Arniches

The calle de Carlos Arniches descends from the little hill of the Rastro to the field of Mundo Nuevo, in the Embajadores district. It already appears on Teixeira’s map of 1656, and from the sixteenth century it carried a single name, Peñón, after a great rock on the spot. So it was called, without change, until 1931. Arniches found his voice in the sainetes of the lower districts, and the Rastro, Embajadores, and Lavapiés supplied his characters. He had a method: he rented a room on the street itself, and there he and his collaborator Carlos García Álvarez would change clothes to blend in with the neighbours and go down to the tavern to jot down phrases. From that ear pressed to the bar came more than two hundred pieces, from El santo de la Isidra (1898) to La señorita de Trevélez (1916). The tribute, promoted by the Centro de Hijos de Madrid, was unveiled on 26 March 1931, with Arniches leaning from the balcony while the Municipal Band played passages from his works. At numbers 3 and 5 survives a corrala of 1860, the same architecture of shared courtyard and galleries that he portrayed again and again.