Calle de Núñez de Arce
For Gaspar Núñez de Arce (1832–1903), poet and politician, one of the most widely read lyric voices of the late 19th century. The change was ordered in 1904, six months after his death; the street had earlier been called calle de la Gorguera.
Núñez de Arce gives his name to this street without ever having lived on it: the dedication is pure tribute, for the writer died far from here, on calle de la Cruzada.
It was earlier called Gorguera, a word that seems a corruption of agorera, the name once given to fortune-tellers. A certain María Mola is said to have read fortunes hereabouts and to have ended up executed on charges of witchcraft. The seer’s street ended up, through time and phonetics, as something almost unrecognisable. The only name carved in stone around here belongs neither to the writer nor to the seer, but to the printer Joaquín Ibarra.
Pedro de Répide records in Las calles de Madrid that María Mola, a fortune-teller expelled from Burgos, was executed on this street under the pragmatic issued by John II of Castile in 1411 against sorcerers; her name stuck to the place and, through phonetic corruption, gave rise to the place name Gorguera.
Its names
- Calle de la Agorerah. 15th century
- Calle de la Gorguerah. 16th century – 1904
- Calle de Núñez de Arce1904 – actualidad
Sources (10)
- Calle de La Gorguera (O Núñez de Arce) — Flaneando por Madrid
- Núñez de Arce: antes de La Agorera — La Paseata
- Por las calles de Madrid: Calle de Núñez de Arce
- Gaspar Núñez de Arce — Wikipedia (en inglés)
- Gaspar Núñez de Arce — Filosofia.org / Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada
- Madripedia — Calle de Núñez de Arce
- Es Madrid no Madriz — La Agorera
- Columnacero — La bruja agorera que vivía en la calle Núñez de Arce
- Peñasco de la Puente, H. y Cambronero, C. — Las calles de Madrid (1889), BNE digital
- PARES/MCU — Autoridad Núñez de Arce, Gaspar (1832-1903)