Calle de Francos Rodríguez

The name honours José Francos Rodríguez (Madrid, 1862-1931), the son of a coachman who studied medicine while working as an errand boy at the Anthropological Museum to pay his way. He ended up practising the pen and the podium more than the scalpel: he ran the Heraldo de Madrid, held the city’s mayoralty in two terms, between 1910 and 1912 and again in 1917-1918, and held a seat in the Royal Spanish Academy. In a book of 1920 he argued for women’s political equality, ground rarely crossed by the men of his day. The calle de Francos Rodríguez took its name on 1 March 1916, while the honoured man was still alive. Before that it had been the camino de la Dehesa de la Villa, a tree-lined track that brushed the humble houses of Bellas Vistas and ended by the park. During the Civil War, between 1937 and 1940, it was called calle del Quinto Regimiento, after the militia unit of Madrid’s defence.