Calle de Santa María Micaela

Behind the name is a woman who traded the salons of the court for the neighborhoods no one wanted to enter. María Micaela Desmaisières, Viscountess of Jorbalán, was raised for aristocratic life. Visiting a hospital, she became aware of the plight of women in prostitution, and from that grew her life’s work: a shelter and, in 1856, the congregation of the Adoratrices. In August 1865, when a cholera epidemic ravaged Valencia, she traveled there rather than leave her sisters and the women in her care alone. She caught the disease tending to others and died at fifty-six. The city’s street map returned the gesture in this corner of Argüelles.