Calle de Eduardo Benot

Eduardo Benot was born in Cádiz in 1822, the son of an Italian officer of Napoleon’s army. A precocious child, he was signing newspaper articles at fourteen, and as an adult he spread his curiosity across mathematics, physics, teaching and the study of languages. His most lasting mark was on language itself. In his Arquitectura de las lenguas he sensed things about how language works that Ferdinand de Saussure, father of modern linguistics, would soon set down. And he left a dictionary unlike others: the Diccionario de ideas afines, which, instead of ordering words alphabetically, grouped them by meaning, gathering every word related to a concept. Politics carried him to the Cortes and to the post of minister of public works during the First Republic, from which he pushed one of Spain’s first laws limiting child labour. The street that bears his name traces a short stretch in Argüelles, barely a hundred paces between doorways.