Calle de los Hermanos Álvarez Quintero

Las Salesas·Justicia

The street takes its name from the playwrights Serafín (1871-1938) and Joaquín (1873-1944) Álvarez Quintero, born in Utrera (Seville) and died in Madrid, where they spent almost their entire theatrical careers. The city dedicated this Justicia street to them as a posthumous tribute to the most prolific pair of authors in Spanish short theatre at the turn of the century. The available sources record neither the street’s former name nor the exact date of the naming decree.

Between Serrano Anguita and Sagasta runs this short stretch of the Justicia quarter, surrounded by the bourgeois Madrid that was growing when the two brothers it recalls came to the city. Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero settled in Madrid around 1889 and left their treasury jobs to devote themselves to the theatre. Between 1889 and 1944 they premiered more than two hundred works —⁠sainetes, comedies of manners, zarzuelas⁠— with their eyes on a cheerful Andalusia of popular types and finely tuned dialogue. No one was performed more in Spain than they were. Galdós dubbed them “the poets of kindness,” and the Royal Academy opened its doors to both. Madrid gave them two tributes in stone and bronze: a sculptural group in the Retiro, unveiled in 1934, and a plaque with their profiles on the façade of Velázquez 76, where they spent their last years. Both rest in the San Justo cemetery, the same as Larra and Espronceda.

Its names

  • Calle de los Hermanos Álvarez QuinteroPosterior a 1944 (fecha exacta no documentada en fuentes accesibles)
Sources (8)

Crossings