Calle del Maestro Ángel Llorca

The street did not carry this name until 2017. It was previously called Calle del General Rodrigo, and the change came through historical memory laws, which replaced the soldier with a schoolteacher. Ángel Llorca García, born in Orcheta (Alicante) in 1866, took charge in 1916 of the Cervantes School, on the Cuatro Caminos roundabout, a short walk from this street. There he put into practice the ideas of the Free Institution of Education: workshops, laboratories, a dining hall, a library, an indoor pool and outings. The school opened from nine in the morning to nine at night and let the older boys work on their own, with no teacher watching over them. One of those pupils was Santiago Carrillo, who recalled the afternoons at the Cervantes: we would have stayed to sleep if we had had beds. Llorca died in Madrid in 1942. The plaque calls him Maestro, with no further title.