Calle de Jorge Juan

The street takes its name from Jorge Juan y Santacilia (1713-1773), sailor, mathematician and Enlightenment scientist, a key figure in the Bourbon naval reform. Madrid’s City Council named it during the development of the Ensanche de Salamanca, in the second half of the 19th century. The stretch between plaza de Colón and calle de Serrano was renamed Calle de la Armada Española in 2015.

Calle de Jorge Juan was born with the Ensanche de Salamanca, approved on 19 July 1860 and driven by the Marquis of Salamanca. The City Council chose to honour Jorge Juan y Santacilia, who directed Madrid’s Royal Seminary of Nobles from 1770 until his death in 1773. That tie to the city weighed on the choice. Born in Novelda (Alicante) in 1713, his great adventure was the geodesic expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru, between 1735 and 1744, on which he travelled with Antonio de Ulloa to measure a meridian arc over the equator and test whether the Earth was flattened at the poles. In 1753 he built, with Louis Godin, Spain’s first astronomical observatory, in Cádiz. The street lost a section in 2015, when the governing board split off the stretch between plaza de Colón and calle de Serrano and named it calle de la Armada Española.

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