Calle del General Ibáñez de Ibero

The name recalls Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero, a geographer-engineer and general born in Barcelona in 1825. In 1870 he founded the Geographic and Statistical Institute, forerunner of today’s National Geographic Institute, and led the surveying of the map of Spain through a network of geodesic triangulations. His prestige crossed borders: he chaired the International Committee for Weights and Measures until his death, in the years when the platinum-iridium prototypes of the metre and the kilogram were distributed to the signatory states. The street name comes from the place itself. At number 3 stands the headquarters of the National Geographic Institute, a building of exposed brick and Neo-Mudéjar lines raised between 1923 and 1930, where the institute’s maps, instruments and cartographic collections are kept.