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.

On the night of 1 March 1836, García Gutiérrez had left the barracks without leave to attend the premiere of El trovador at the Teatro del Príncipe. When the audience called for the author, he had no civilian clothes. His friend Ventura de la Vega lent him, from the back of the stage, a militiaman’s frock coat in which he came out to receive the ovation. The work was declared the most acclaimed premiere in the history of Spanish theatre; that night the soldier without leave became the most celebrated playwright of his generation.