Calle de Rafaela Bonilla
The street takes its name from Rafaela Bonilla, wife of the developer and architect Julián Marín, author of the first phase of the Madrid Moderno estate in La Guindalera (1890–1892). The estate’s main avenue bore Marín’s name until 1931, when the City Council renamed it Avenida de los Toreros; his wife’s name survived on the cross street.
Calle de Rafaela Bonilla belongs to La Guindalera, one of the first areas to grow outside the Ensanche that Carlos María de Castro had drawn up for Madrid. There, at the end of the 19th century, a developer and architect named Julián Marín built something new. Between 1890 and 1892 he raised the first phase of the Madrid Moderno estate: terraced single-family houses in the Neo-Mudéjar style, with two-tone brick, glazed bay windows and circular turrets on the corners.
The estate’s main avenue bore Marín’s name until 1931, when it was renamed Avenida de los Toreros.
The intriguing part comes with the present name. Of Rafaela Bonilla, the woman the street honors, almost nothing is known. Her biography appears in neither the official street registry nor the municipal records available for consultation. A whole street remembers her; her story, however, has been lost.