Calle García Gutiérrez

Calle de García Gutiérrez joins calle de Génova with plaza de la Villa de París. Short, wide and closed to traffic, it holds at number 1 the main entrance of the National Court, which occupies its whole northern side. The land was the vegetable garden of the Salesas Reales convent, founded by Queen Barbara of Braganza in 1748. When the nuns were secularised in 1870, the State installed the Supreme Court and the High Court here, and the street was born on the freed strip. It recalls the playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez, who arrived from Cádiz penniless and became a regular of the El Parnasillo café alongside Espronceda and Larra. His most famous work, El trovador, travelled far without profit to him: Verdi turned it into Il trovatore by buying the rights from the librettist, and the opera’s 1853 triumph eventually eclipsed the original abroad, to the point that the author remained unknown beyond the Pyrenees while his drama filled theatres under another’s name.