Calle de Chinchilla

Francisco de Chinchilla was a magistrate of the royal household and court and a minister of the Holy Office. His signature weighed in the trial of Rodrigo Calderón, the fallen royal favourite, whom he voted to execute in 1621. But his ill fame in Madrid came from something more domestic. He tried to forbid neighbours from leaving dead animals rotting in the roadway, a reasonable measure the district took as an affront. The answer had a black aim: they began dumping dead dogs and cats at his own door. From that standoff came a saying at his expense: “even the dogs know him!” The street paid dearly for the coming of the twentieth century. When the Gran Vía was opened from 1910, the works swept away numbers 9 and 11, and what had been a full through-street was reduced to a short, crooked side street between the Gran Vía and the calle de la Abada. No monument ever faced it: its only claim to glory remains the magistrate the dogs knew all too well.