Calle de López Silva

Barely a hundred metres separate calle de Toledo from calle de Santa Ana, in the heart of Embajadores. For a long time the neighbourhood called it calle de las Velas (Candles Street): tallow candles were sold there for the district’s poor homes, while wax, more costly, was kept for churches and palaces. On the corner with Toledo stood the Teatro Novedades, opened by Isabella II in 1857, which burned down in September 1928; the renaming came afterwards. José López Silva, born in the neighbourhood in 1861, drew his characters and popular speech from these streets. His major work was La revoltosa (1897), with music by Chapí, set in a tenement courtyard less than two hundred metres from the old street. He died in Buenos Aires in 1925, and his name returned to the neighbourhood that had given him its voice.

The Teatro Novedades, whose corner opened onto this street when it was still called Calle de las Velas, programmed on its final night — 23 September 1928 — the Andalusian sainete La mejor del puerto. A short circuit on the stage at 8:50 p.m. set off a fire that killed some eighty people. The building was demolished. Weeks or years later, the street flanking the empty lot took the name of the playwright who had best portrayed that same working-class neighborhood.