Calle Salvador Granes

A street dedicated to Salvador María Granés y Román, who was born in Madrid on 17 August 1838 and enrolled in law until his first work, Don José, Pepe y Pepito (1864), diverted him from the courtroom for good. His field was the género chico, and he cultivated it with astonishing fecundity: more than 135 pieces among sainetes, zarzuelas and revues. But Granés’s signature shone above all in lyric-dramatic parody. He took operas by Puccini, Bizet or Verdi and returned them to the public rewritten in verse, their titles in disguise. Out of that came La Golfemia (1900), his best-known work. As a journalist he hid behind the pen name “Moscatel.” He died in his city in 1911. Barely twenty-eight metres of street recall him in La Guindalera, a spot whose streets filled up in the early decades of the 20th century with names from the theatre and the popular arts.