Plaza de Olavide
It recalls Pablo de Olavide, an 18th-century Enlightenment politician and intellectual in the service of the reforms of Charles III.
Before it had a proper name, this junction of eight streets was known as Plaza Industrial. Around 1860, at the neighbors' suggestion, it came to honor Pablo de Olavide, an Enlightenment intellectual of the 18th century who served Charles III in the reforms of the reign: he repopulated the Sierra Morena with settlers from central Europe and reorganized the studies of the University of Seville. His zeal for reform cost him dearly: the Inquisition tried him and condemned him to exile, first shut in a convent and then banished to France.
The Plaza de Olavide forms an almost perfect octagon, with eight streets running in and out of its corners, among them Trafalgar, Santa Feliciana and Gonzalo de Córdoba. At its center rose a rationalist market of stepped prisms, built in 1934 and beloved by the neighborhood. On November 2, 1974 it was brought down with a controlled demolition, despite protests from shopkeepers and architects. In its place remained the garden with a fountain that today fills Chamberí with café terraces.