Calle de Luis Díaz Cobeña

Luis Díaz Cobeña (1837-1915) became dean of the Madrid Bar Association, a title the Bar chose to engrave on the cover of the “Dictámenes” it issued in 1919 as a tribute after his death. Before that he covered nearly the whole political map of his time: deputy and then senator for Badajoz, Lugo and Orense, until he won a lifetime seat in 1908. He also had a playwright’s pen, with premieres of his own and a verse version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But his most talked-about episode happened in the courts: in 1889 he defended the director of the Modelo Prison, accused in the notorious Calle Fuencarral crime, and won an acquittal. Two young men then passed through his chambers as clerks who would later govern the country: Niceto Alcalá Zamora and Manuel Azaña. Calle de Luis Díaz Cobeña, barely 118 metres in the Guindalera neighbourhood, received its name after 1941.