Calle Salas

In the official register it appears plainly: Salas, with no modifier to clarify whom or what it refers to. Its layout was born with the northeast Ensanche drawn by the Castro Plan in 1860 and developed between 1870 and 1890, when the council was naming the new streets of the Castellana neighbourhood. The crossing that anchors it does have a clear owner: the square came to be called Doctor Marañón when Gregorio Marañón died, a doctor and intellectual who lived a stone’s throw from here. The surname Salas turns up in other corners of Madrid. In Tetuán, Calle de Francisco Salas recalls the singer and impresario who drove the Teatro de la Zarzuela; there is also a Calle de Salas Barbadillo dedicated to the Golden Age novelist. And here is what makes this particular street curious: no one knows which Salas it refers to. A faceless surname, planted in the heart of the Castellana neighbourhood.