Calle Gurtubay
The street takes its name from the Gurtubay family, represented by Juan Cruz de Gurtubay Meaza, son of the Basque merchant Simón Gurtubay Zubero, who owned the land the street runs through, gave it free of charge to the Madrid City Council and helped pay for developing the Ensanche. The surname comes from the Biscayan place name Urtubai, ‘oat pasture,’ in the Atxondo valley.
Calle Gurtubay was born of a gesture of property-owning generosity, but the surname comes from much further off, from a Basque man who made his fortune in cod.
Simón Gurtubay Zubero was born in Igorre in 1800 and ended up importing cod, the trade that changed everything. During the second Carlist siege of Bilbao, in 1836, he built up a fortune that he then invested shrewdly: the Bilbao-Tudela railway, the Bilbao Chamber of Commerce and the board of the Banco de Bilbao. His son, Juan Cruz Gurtubay Meaza, brought the family money to Madrid.
He owned the plots between the streets of Lagasca and Velázquez, in the heart of the Castro Plan Ensanche. Rather than sell them, he gave the land to the city asking nothing in return, and on top of that helped pay to open the street. The City Council thanked him for the gift in the only way it knows: it named the street after him. Anyone strolling down Gurtubay today walks over land a Bilbao merchant gave to the city.
Sources (6)
- El rincón de Mayrit: Gurtubay (mayo 2014) — cita a Isabel Gea Ortigas, Los nombres de las calles de Madrid, Ediciones La Librería, 5.ª ed., 1993
- Auñamendi Eusko Entziklopedia: Gurtubay Zubero, Simón (ar-76776)
- Auñamendi Eusko Entziklopedia: Gurtubay Meaza, Juan Cruz (ar-57820)
- Deia: La fábula protagonizada por Simón Gurtubay que nació de un error (17-IX-2023)
- Alma de herrero: José María Gurtubay Meaza (febrero 2019)
- Wikidata: Don Juan de Gurtubay y Meaza (Q116053410)