Calle de Sánchez Barcáiztegui

On 2 May 1866, off the port of Callao, the screw frigate Almansa took nearly 160 hits from Peruvian coastal artillery. Her commander was Victoriano Sánchez Barcáiztegui, a sailor who had joined the Navy at the age of twelve. A heavy shell started a fire that was spreading toward the powder magazine, and his officers urged him to flood it before the ship blew up. He answered with the line that made him famous: “Today is no day to wet the powder.” The crew put out the fire by hand without leaving their position, and within half an hour the frigate was back in the firing line. Nine years later, during the Third Carlist War, he commanded the naval forces of the Cantabrian coast. On 26 May 1875, a cannon shot fired from Motrico killed him instantly aboard the steamer Colón. He was 49. Alfonso XII raised a statue to him in Ferrol, and Madrid, Cádiz and Manila all named streets after him. The Madrid one lies in the Pacífico district, among the names of sailors from the Isabelline and Restoration eras. The exact year Sánchez Barcáiztegui was named has not survived, though it points to the second half of the 1870s.