Calle de Cavanilles

Before the City Council brought order, the residents of the Pacífico district already had a name for this street: they called it Cabanilles, with a b, just as it sounded to those who repeated it. The route dropped down toward the open country that stretched south of Madrid in the mid-19th century. On 21 July 1880 the council corrected the spelling and fixed the form Cavanilles, in honour of the Valencian botanist Antonio José Cavanilles y Palop. Cavanilles had studied in Valencia and in 1777 travelled to Paris as tutor to the sons of the Duke of Infantado. That posting opened the door to science: he learned botany from André Thouin and Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. Back in Madrid he published his major works, the Icones et descriptiones plantarum (1791-1801). In 1801 he was named director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, a post he held until his death in 1804. That garden, next to the Retiro park, ties the man to the district that bears his name.