Calle de Orellana

Anyone walking today along calle de Orellana treads the ground of a convent that no longer exists: until 1836 these lands were held by the Discalced Mercedarians of Santa Bárbara, emptied by the disentailment. The street was born of the convent’s demolition and the building drive of the 19th-century middle class. Before the housing came iron. José Bonaplata bought the plot and in 1839 raised a foundry that employed more than eighty workers, turning out steam engines, presses and street lamps. When his widow sold, the Sociedad de Crédito Inmobiliario razed what remained and built it up; from that came this street, part of Campoamor and of Argensola. The detail that stops the walker is at the corner with Campoamor. In 2008 that building woke up covered by 900 square metres of fresco: “Todo es Felicidá,” by Jack Babiloni, with mythological figures peering out between the balconies. Pressure from residents halted the proceedings that would have forced its removal, and there it remains.