Calle de Hermosilla

Calle de Hermosilla crosses the Salamanca district from west to east, from the Paseo de la Castellana to calle de Diego Bahamonde. Its first stretch had another name, calle de la Concepción, after the church that was the neighbourhood’s first temple. The current name was fixed in 1871, during the development of the Ensanche. The curious thing is that no one knows for certain who it honours. There are two candidates and no document to settle it. One is José Mamerto Gómez Hermosilla, philologist and translator of Homer, whose Arte de hablar en prosa y verso (1826) was imposed in schools by royal decree. The other is the architect José de Hermosilla y Sandoval, who designed the Paseo del Prado and the Hospital General, today the Reina Sofía Museum. So the street honours, depending on whom you ask, a translator of Homer or the architect who designed the façade through which visitors now enter to see the Guernica.