Calle José Francisco de Iturzaeta e Izaguirre
Recalls José Francisco de Iturzaeta e Izaguirre, a 19th-century calligrapher from Gipuzkoa whose method for teaching handwriting became standard in Spanish schools.
José Francisco de Iturzaeta e Izaguirre was born in Getaria, on the coast of Gipuzkoa, in 1788, into a humble family. Before he was twenty, his steady hand with the pen had already made him famous in San Sebastián.
In 1816 he moved to Madrid and became the best-known calligrapher of his day. His Arte de escribir la letra bastarda española set a model copied in thousands of notebooks, and in 1835 a royal decree made it compulsory in the country’s primary schools.
The street, barely fifty metres long in Valdeacederas, bears his full name, with the complete Basque surname.