Calle de Gravina

Between Hortaleza and Barquillo, in the heart of Chueca, this Justicia street already appeared on Texeira’s 1656 map as Calle de San Francisco, covering only the stretch between today’s calle de Pelayo and calle de Luis de Góngora. In 1846 it was extended to its present shape. Its namesake was born in Palermo: Federico Carlos Gravina y Nápoli, of Sicilian noble family long tied to the Spanish Crown, who came to command the fleet in 1805. On 21 October of that year, at Trafalgar, he led the ship Príncipe de Asturias when grapeshot shattered his left arm. Badly wounded, he still had the resolve to regroup ten ships and lead them back to Cádiz, where he died in 1806 with the wound never healed. The street also holds a chapter of labour history: at number 15, in 1908, opened the rear entrance of the theatre of Pablo Iglesias’s Casa del Pueblo, seating four thousand. It was seized in 1939 and demolished in 1953.