Calle Divino Vallés

A king gave him the nickname. Philip II suffered from gout, and when his physician eased one of those bouts he began to call him “the Divine.” The name stuck, and centuries later it reached this calle in Arganzuela, straddling the neighborhoods of Chopera and Delicias. Francisco Vallés was born in Covarrubias in 1524 and trained at the University of Alcalá, where he rose to professor of medicine. There he was among the first to give practical lessons on cadavers, rather than confining teaching to books. That attention to the patient’s body counts him among the forerunners of pathological anatomy in Spain. In 1572 he entered the king’s service as court physician and chief physician of Castile. He spent his last years near El Escorial, ordering the library and distilling medicinal plants for the king. He died in 1592. The “Divine” on the sign was no academic title, but the trace of that relief.