Calle de Florestán Aguilar
Florestán Aguilar y Rodríguez (Havana, 1872 - Madrid, 1934), a Cuban dentist, founded university dental studies in Spain and served as dentist to the Royal Household. Alfonso XIII granted him the viscountcy of Casa Aguilar in 1928. The street, in La Guindalera, has borne his name at least since the mid-20th century.
A Cuban who learned to pull teeth in Philadelphia ended up giving his name to a street in La Guindalera, and along the way turned Spanish dentistry into a university degree. Florestán Aguilar y Rodríguez was born in Havana in 1872 and came to Madrid in 1890 to work as assistant to Queen María Cristina’s dentist. When his master left in 1898, the young Cuban kept the clinic and its palace clientele.
What came next was more crusade than consulting room. In 1896 he gathered his colleagues for an assembly that ended up forcing Dentistry into the Central University, until then a trade with no regulated qualification. His practice kept its eye on the throne: Alfonso XIII named him dentist to the Royal Chamber in 1914 and, by decree in 1928, invented a bespoke noble title for him, the viscountcy of Casa Aguilar.
The calle de Florestán Aguilar lies in La Guindalera and holds a postwar detail: a block of 116 municipal flats opened in 1951. Anyone who wants to complete the story has somewhere to look: the library of the Complutense’s Faculty of Dentistry keeps his personal collection.
Sources (6)
- Florestán Aguilar - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Sobre Don Florestán Aguilar — Biblioteca de la Facultad de Odontología UCM
- Aguilar y Rodríguez, Florestán — Diccionario Biográfico de la Medicina Española (Biomedes)
- Florestán Aguilar y la Federación Dental Internacional — Odontólogos de Hoy
- Aguilar y Rodríguez, Florestán — RANM, registro de académicos 1933
- Viviendas municipales Florestán Aguilar — Arte en Madrid