Calle de Pedro de Muguruza

Behind the name stands Pedro Muguruza Otaño (1893-1952), an architect born in Elgoibar and qualified in Madrid in 1916. He began as an assistant to Antonio Palacios and soon came the work that made him famous: the Palacio de la Prensa, on the plaza del Callao. He raised it in exposed brick, sixteen storeys and nearly sixty metres tall, its silhouette owing much to the skyscrapers of New York. It was the city’s first, until the Telefónica building on the Gran Vía took the record soon after. Drawing was one of his hallmarks. That hand is recognisable in the monument to Cervantes on the plaza de España, in the Coliseum cinema and in the Maravillas market. He rose to director general of Architecture and led the postwar reconstruction. The city council dedicated this street in Nueva España to him in 1959, seven years after his death.