Calle José Lázaro Galdiano

José Lázaro Galdiano gathered one of the greatest art collections Spain has ever held. He was born in Beire, in Navarre, in 1862, and moved with ease between money and culture. He made his fortune as a financier, but his passion was the printed word and art. In 1889 he founded the magazine La España Moderna, one of the most influential of its time, in whose pages Pardo Bazán, Galdós, Clarín and Unamuno collaborated. In 1903 he married Paula Florido, an Argentine who shared his love of art. For her he raised a neo-Renaissance mansion on calle Serrano that he named Parque Florido. For decades he bought works across Europe: at his death he had gathered more than twelve thousand pieces, among them Goya, El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán and a Bosch. He died in 1947 with no direct heirs and left his house and all his treasure to the state. That mansion is today the museum bearing his surname, little more than a kilometre from the street that also names him.