Plaza Rutilio Gacis

Anyone reading the sign of this plaza de Rutilio Gacís, in Chopera, is repeating a mistake nearly seventy years old. The man honoured was Rutilio Gaci, a sculptor and engraver who came from Tuscany towards the end of the sixteenth century. The street registry added an extra s and named him “Gacís”, a spelling that stuck from the moment the street appeared on the city maps in 1953. Gaci worked for the court of the early Habsburgs. Between 1617 and 1620 he collaborated with the royal architect Juan Gómez de Mora on a scheme that filled the squares with fountains. The best remembered was the Mariblanca, in the Puerta del Sol, crowned by a white marble figure; he also made those of the Puerta Cerrada and the plaza de San Salvador. No record survives of who introduced the error. The city council acknowledged it in late 2021 and agreed to restore the sculptor’s true surname.