Plazuela de la Doctora Gabriela Morreale

The name honors Gabriella Morreale de Castro (Milan, 1930 – Madrid, 2017), an Italian chemist naturalized as Spanish who built her career at the CSIC and introduced in Spain the newborn screening for congenital hypothyroidism through the heel-prick test. The little square occupies the refurbished meeting point of Abtao and Valderribas streets, in the Pacífico neighborhood, and received its name in 2021 at the initiative of the Equality Board of the Retiro Local Forum.

For years it was just a nameless crossing. Where Abtao and Valderribas meet there was a space the City Council refurbished around 2020, planting trees and setting out benches. The Equality Board of the Retiro Local Forum proposed naming it after Doctor Morreale, and the plazuela was inaugurated on 29 April 2021. Gabriella Morreale de Castro had been born in Milan on 7 April 1930. An Italian chemist naturalized as Spanish, she built almost her entire career at the CSIC Biomedical Research Institute, which in 2023 added her surname to its name. Her most tangible mark is carried by anyone born in Spain since the 1980s: she drove the heel-prick test here, that prick in the newborn’s foot that detects congenital hypothyroidism and prevents on the order of 150 cases of intellectual disability a year. She died in Madrid in 2017. The dedication answers an effort by the Retiro District to correct the scarce presence of women in the neighborhood’s streets.

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