Calle de la Madera

Malasaña·Universidad

The street takes its name from the timber yards and stores that occupied the site before it was built up, around 1580. Tradition, recorded by Capmany (1863) and Peñasco y Cambronero (1889), holds that these lots belonged to Catalina de la Cerda, who stockpiled construction timber brought to Madrid from various places, including pieces from the Indies and shipments from Valsaín. The timber trade lasted for decades and gave the street its name when it was laid out.

Some logs came down from the pine forests of Valsaín, in the Sierra de Guadarrama; others crossed the Atlantic from the Americas. The raw material that built Madrid passed through here while the city was becoming a royal capital. For centuries there were two streets here, not one: Madera Baja and Madera Alta, which the twentieth century merged into today’s Calle de la Madera, in the Universidad quarter. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, timber gave way to ink. The street filled with print workshops and newspaper offices, and it kept drawing writers: Fernando Arrabal lived here as a child, and José Saramago haunted the bar Casa Julio during his stays in Madrid.
Boccherini died in Madrid on 28 May 1805 and spent part of his old age on the Madera Alta. In 1956 the City Council installed a commemorative plaque with the inscription “In this house lived and died / Luigi Boccherini / distinguished musician / Here he composed admirable works / of Italian roots and Madrid setting”, with a dedication by Gerardo Diego. The plaque marks number 5 of the calle Jesús y María as the place of death, not the Madera; later research by José Antonio Boccherini and Jaime Tortella further showed that the plaque is on the wrong block number, a consequence of the change in the numbering system in 1834.

Its names

  • Madera Alta / Madera Bajahasta 20th century
  • Calle de la Madera20th century–actualidad
Sources (10)

Crossings