Calle José Picón

José Picón García was born in Madrid in 1829 and trained as an architect at the Escuela Especial de Arquitectura, where he would later teach. Drawing plans did not fill his hours: he wrote art criticism, worked in journalism and dreamed of the theatre. He soon found his ground in zarzuela, setting words to the music of Cristóbal Oudrid and Francisco Asenjo Barbieri. With Barbieri he wrote in 1864 his best-remembered work, Pan y toros, a three-act zarzuela set in the Madrid of 1792 that tangled liberal political intrigue with the bustle of the bullring. The piece filled theatres three seasons running, until in 1867 Isabella II ordered it withdrawn. His final years were dark. Suffering from mental illness, he entered a sanatorium in Valladolid, where he died in 1873. The surname would go on echoing in Spanish letters through his nephew, the novelist Jacinto Octavio Picón. The City Council dedicated this street to him by resolution in 1887.