Calle Nuevo Baztán

Some fifty kilometers from Madrid stands a town born from the ambition of a single man. Juan de Goyeneche, a Navarrese financier from the Baztán valley, decided in the early eighteenth century to build from scratch a complex where factory and housing shared walls. He brought workers from his homeland, commissioned the layout from the architect José Benito de Churriguera, and named the place after his valley: Nuevo Baztán. This short street in Adelfas takes its name from that town. There operated factories of cloth, hats, leather, and spirits, and above all a fine glassworks that supplied Madrid’s royal Alcázar and was even exported to the Americas. The dream did not last: a shortage of firewood gradually put out the furnaces, and the hamlet remained as a testament to an industrial utopia in the heart of Castile. Today the site is listed as a Cultural Heritage Site.