Calle del Marqués de Toca

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The name honours Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Sáenz de Lobera (Vergara, 1804 – Madrid, 1880), personal physician to Isabella II, professor at the San Carlos Faculty of Medicine and first marquess of Toca by Royal Decree of 30 October 1866. The street was called Esperancilla from at least the 17th century until 1899, when Madrid’s City Council agreed to the name change, partly because of the street’s closeness to the San Carlos Faculty of Medicine itself, at Atocha 106, where Sánchez de Toca studied and won his professorship by competitive examination in 1837.

Before it honoured a palace physician, this street hid a widow and a Breton captain. On Texeira’s 1656 map it already appears as Esperancilla, a diminutive that kept it from being confused with the neighbouring calle de la Esperanza. Behind the diminutive lies a medieval legend with no document to back it. It is said a well-off widow, María Esperanza, lived here and gave shelter to the Breton captain Bertrand du Guesclin, ally of Henry of Trastámara in the war against Peter I. The residents, loyal to Peter I, burned her house. Henry offered her compensation; she refused it and moved to a nearby property that came to be called Esperancilla. The present name came much later, with a physician who made his career beside the throne. Melchor Sánchez de Toca was a palace surgeon and Isabella II granted him the title of marquess in 1866. Barely 120 metres linking Atocha with Santa Isabel hold two stories that never met in life: that of a widow who chose to lose everything rather than accept payment for the insult, and that of a surgeon who ended up naming the corner where that house once burned.

Its names

  • Esperancillaanterior a 1656 - 1899
  • Calle del Marqués de Toca1899 - actualidad
Sources (10)

Crossings