Calle del Maestro Villa

A street opened in the early twentieth century to link the Cava de San Miguel with the Plaza del Conde de Barajas, deep in the Habsburg quarter. It is one of the short, narrow ones, born with the sole task of stitching the city together. Since 1941 it honours Ricardo Villa González, born in 1871, orphaned at ten and a child of prodigious ear: a solfège prize at eleven, first prize in violin in 1898, and conductor of the Teatro Real orchestra in 1905. His greatest work was the Madrid Municipal Band, which he founded and premiered on 2 June 1909 at the Teatro Español, to resounding success. He gave it an almost symphonic body, rare among the bands of the day. Villa believed in open-air, free music: from 1909 he organised concerts in the Retiro, a custom still alive. There is a Plaza del Maestro Villa there where the Band plays on Sundays, just as he began.