Calle Gustavo Fernández Balbuena

Gustavo Fernández Balbuena (1888-1931) was born in Madrid and qualified as an architect in 1914. In 1919 he joined as municipal architect and as deputy of the Expansion Section, the department that decided where the new streets opened and how the neighbourhoods were laid out. He argued that town planning should be taught as a discipline in its own right. He proposed a great linear park along the Manzanares that was not built at the time, though his ideas guided later projects. In 1918 he founded and directed the magazine Arquitectura, and in 1926 he organised the first national planning congress in Spain. In November 1931, during a cruise bound for Palma de Mallorca, he vanished into the Mediterranean off the coast of Andratx. The street lies in the heart of the Colonia de la Prosperidad, among the low houses raised in the same years he was working on the growth of Madrid.