Calle del Maestro Guerrero

Conde Duque·Universidad

The street takes its name from Jacinto Guerrero Torres (Ajofrín, Toledo, 1895 – Madrid, 1951), a composer of zarzuelas who lived nearby and whose work dominated the Spanish lyric stage of the 1920s and 1930s. The official name change came on 14 October 1953, two years after the composer’s death; the commemorative plaque was installed on 11 October 1957 at the initiative of the Spanish General Society of Authors.

Behind the Edificio España, a short street links calle de los Reyes with calle de San Leonardo. Its first stretch appears on seventeenth-century maps with a double name, Abadía y Castro, taken from two owners of the facing block, Diego de la Abadía and Juan de Castro. Peñasco and Cambronero offered another, more exotic explanation in 1889: the name would come from an abada⁠—⁠a female rhinoceros in Portuguese⁠—⁠that one Castro exhibited here to the curious. In the 1835 register the name was simplified to calle de Castro. The present name, set on plaques in 1953, honours Jacinto Guerrero, the zarzuela composer who triumphed with La alsaciana (1921), Los gavilanes (1923), and El huésped del sevillano (1926). Between 1931 and 1933 he financed and built the Coliseum building on the Gran Vía. At number 2 survives a plaque by the sculptor Ignacio Pinazo: a cherub with a violin among lyres and laurels.

Its names

  • Calle de Abadía y Castro (o Abada de Castro)Siglo 17th – 1835
  • Calle de Castro11 de enero de 1835 – 14 de octubre de 1953
  • Calle del Maestro Guerrero14 de octubre de 1953 – actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings