Calle de Zabaleta

Juan de Zabaleta was one of the sharpest observers of everyday manners in the Golden Age. Born between 1600 and 1615, he served as chronicler to Philip IV and devoted his books to what few thought worth the ink: how the ordinary Madrileño dressed, ate and idled away his days. His pages parade the gallant who takes forever to dress, the vain lady before the mirror, the loafer killing time in the Prado. It is Madrid told from the inside, with dry humour and a moralist’s eye. In December 1664 he went blind, and even so he kept publishing to the end. The calle de Zabaleta belongs to the Prosperidad quarter, which grew around 1860 beside the old Hortaleza road as a cluster of low brick-and-tile houses with yards and vegetable plots. The demolitions of the 1960s and 1970s swept away almost all of that half-rural neighbourhood.