Plaza de Santa María Soledad Torres Acosta

Malasaña·Universidad

The name honours Bibiana Antonia Manuela Torres Acosta (1826-1887), a Madrid-born nun who took the name María Soledad on founding, in 1851, the congregation of the Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick. She was canonised by Paul VI on 25 January 1970, the same year the Palacio de Monistrol was demolished and the square created. The city named it after her in that same period, though the timing is not documented as explicit cause in the published municipal records.

Anyone crossing this square today treads on the site of a vanished mansion: the Palacio de Monistrol, already drawn by Pedro Texeira in 1656 at the corner of calle de la Luna and Tudescos. The building lived several lives —⁠offices of the Banco de San Carlos in 1782, the Teatro Pintoresco with its mechanical figures from 1826⁠— before the speculation of the 1960s left it a ruin. In August 1969 its demolition was ordered, and around 1970 the present square was born on the cleared gap. The saint of the official name, Bibiana Antonia Manuela Torres Acosta, was born in 1826, the daughter of milk sellers, and founded in 1851 the Servants of Mary, a congregation that cared at home for the destitute sick in Chamberí. At her death in 1887 it counted 46 foundations across Spain and the Americas. The square never had a popular name of its own: Madrileños call it “plaza de la Luna,” borrowing that of the street brushing its southern edge.

Its names

  • Solar del arrabal de San MartínAnterior a 1656
  • Palacio de los condes de Sástago1731 – 1857
  • Palacio de Monistrol1857 – 1969
  • Demolición y solar1969 – c. 1970
  • Plaza de Santa María Soledad Torres Acostac. 1970 – actualidad
Sources (13)

Crossings