Calle de Columela
The street takes its name from Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, a Hispano-Roman agronomist born in Gades (modern Cádiz) around AD 4. His work De re rustica (ca. AD 42), twelve books codifying Greco-Roman agricultural knowledge, made him the most systematic agricultural writer of Roman Antiquity. The Ensanche de Salamanca street-naming scheme adopted it in 1870 at the initiative of mayor Manuel María José de Galdo.
The calle de Columela was built on the site of the Puerta de Alcalá bullring, whose last official bullfight took place in July 1874. The advance of the Castro Plan, the Ensanche driven by the Marquis of Salamanca from 1860, sent the ring to the pickaxe.
The stretch between Serrano and Lagasca got its name in the street-naming scheme designed in 1870 by mayor Manuel María José de Galdo, a natural-history professor who wanted to fill the neighbourhood with Spanish scholars. Columella fit perfectly: an agronomist born in Cádiz and a contemporary of Seneca, another illustrious son of the city, he codified the agricultural knowledge of Antiquity in his De re rustica.
The street never had another name. Columella opened it and Columella keeps it.