Calle de Rafael Juan y Seva

The street takes its name from Rafael Juan y Seva, a figure undocumented in the canonical sources of Madrid’s street lore. The compound surname “Juan y Seva,” Catalan in origin and extraordinarily rare, points to a landowner or notable resident of the eastern Ensanche during the second half of the 19th century or the early 20th.

In the Fuente del Berro neighborhood there is a street that commemorates someone about whom nothing is known. Calle de Rafael Juan y Seva was laid out when the 19th-century Ensanche began to fill the area between Doctor Esquerdo and O’Donnell with artisans and small property owners. Many of the neighboring streets follow the same mold: Diego Bahamonde, Gabriel Abreu and Dolores Romero recall private individuals who appear in no historical reference. The surname Seva points toward Catalonia, where a town of the same name lies near Barcelona, documented as early as the year 905. But the compound Juan y Seva is exceedingly rare: only about 59 people in the world carry it. The curious thing is that the true honoree has vanished from memory. Neither the great street registries, nor the historical archives of the Congress and the Senate, nor the old press keep any trace of him. Whoever passes through reads a full name, two surnames and all, without anyone able to tell the story behind it.

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