Calle del Conde de Aranda

Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea was one of the great figures of the reign of Charles III. When the Esquilache riots shook Madrid in 1766, the king summoned him and made him president of the Council of Castile. From that post he had to organise the expulsion of the Jesuits. The Pragmatic Sanction was signed at El Pardo on 2 April 1767 and tore more than five thousand religious from their colleges and missions, in Spain and in the Indies. Educated in Italy and with much of Europe known first-hand, he exchanged letters with the French encyclopédistes; Voltaire is said to have remarked that with half a dozen men like him Spain would regenerate itself. The street also holds two memories. The painter José Gutiérrez Solana was born at number 9, and the Republican politician Francisco Pi y Margall died at number 17.