Plaza del Doctor Laguna

Southeast of the Retiro there is a neighborhood that grew around a children’s hospital, and its streets tell that story without saying so. The Duchess of Santoña founded the Children’s Hospital, whose final Neo-Mudéjar building opened on calle de Menéndez Pelayo in 1881 as the first pediatric hospital in Spain. Hence the surrounding streets read like an open-air doctor’s surgery: the streets of doctors Esquerdo, Argumosa, Cortezo and Marañón surround this Laguna. The doctor who gives his name to plaza del Doctor Laguna is Andrés Laguna, born in Segovia around 1510. He qualified in medicine in Paris with Greek and Latin firm enough to read Dioscorides in the original, without intermediaries. He attended Charles V and Philip II. His great work was an annotated version of the Dioscorides, printed in Antwerp in 1555, which was reissued twenty-two times until the late 18th century. He died in 1559 and rests in Segovia. The square’s name predates 1966, the year of the residential complex built here. In 2024 the space received a full renovation, with new paving and an inclusive children’s area, a late nod to the children’s hospital that gave rise to the neighborhood.