Plaza de Cascorro (Madrid)

Cascorro square is a public space in the Embajadores neighbourhood in the Centro district of Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain.

It has been named this way since 1941 in memory of the siege of Cascorro during the Cuban War of Independence. Located at the head of the Rastro in Madrid, nine streets converge on it: Estudios, Duque de Alba, Juanelo, Embajadores, Maldonadas, San Millán, Ruda, Amazonas and the Ribera de Curtidores.

History

Pedro de Répide, following the story of Mesonero Romanos, describes the space that originated this asymmetrical square in the small square of the Duke of Alba that in the 18th century occupied the surroundings of the old Rastro square, and the disordered streets of the San Millán suburb (old streets of Cuervo and San Dámaso –next to Juanelo–, and the still existing streets of Embajadores, Estudios and the beginning of the descending slope of the populous Ribera de Curtidores, central avenue of the Rastro market. Répide notes that this motley and traditional urban complex was painted by Francisco Goya in cartoons such as The Blind Man with the Guitar, The Comet or The junk dealer, and used by Ramón de la Cruz as a regular setting for his eighteenth-century farces.

By municipal agreement of August 16, 1913, it was renamed in honor of the president of the First Spanish Republic, Nicolás Salmerón, which was enlarged by demolishing the block popularly known as ‘the plug’ (between the aforementioned old streets of Cuervo and San Dámaso). It lost that name in 1941, at the beginning of the Spanish post-war period.

Monument

Installed on the site occupied by the Rastro cross and inaugurated on June 7, 1902, the monument to the heroes of Cascorro from 1896, with the statue of Eloy Gonzalo made in bronze by Aniceto Marinas García with a pedestal by José López Sallaberry, represents the reckless soldier with an oil can and his torso surrounded by a rope. The duality between the name of the square and the character sculpted on the monument generated the confusion of identifying, through ignorance, the soldier in the sculpture with the battle in which he participated.