Plazuela de Ana Diosdado

For years it was just a passage. A nameless widening between calle de Argumosa and calle de Valencia, in the heart of Lavapiés, where people crossed towards the plaza de Lavapiés without knowing they trod an unnamed place. In 2017 that anonymous corner took the name of one of the great voices of 20th-century Spanish theatre. Ana Diosdado first set foot in Spain at the age of twelve. She had been born in Buenos Aires, where her parents, both actors, lived in exile after the Civil War, and she was raised in the wings. Her name burst out in 1970 with Olvida los tambores. Those who did not know her from the theatre discovered her on television: Anillos de oro (1983), which she both wrote and starred in, made her a household name. She was the first woman to head the SGAE, which she chaired between 2001 and 2007. She died in 2015, of a heart attack during a board meeting, at its very headquarters. At the far end of the square rises the Teatro Valle-Inclán, and that site has as many lives as its neighbour: it was the Lo Rat Penat theatre, the Salón Olimpia, a cinema, and a hall that returned to the stage with Brecht. The present building opened in 2006. The nameless street and the theatre of a thousand reincarnations ended up facing each other.