Plaza de Chueca: A Composer's Square and a Reborn Barrio
Why is it significant?
You are in a small, crowded square of terraces and a metro entrance, with rainbow flags hanging from more than one balcony. Everyone in Madrid knows the name Chueca. Far fewer people know that it belongs to a composer.
Key Facts
| Place | Plaza de Chueca: A Composer's Square and a Reborn Barrio |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de Chueca, 28004 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42270, -3.69760 |
| Part of Walk | From the Dos de Mayo to La Movida: Malasaña & Chueca, Madrid's Rebel Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
You are in a small, crowded square of terraces and a metro entrance, with rainbow flags hanging from more than one balcony. Everyone in Madrid knows the name Chueca. Far fewer people know that it belongs to a composer.
Federico Chueca was born in Madrid in 1846 and became the king of the género chico, the short, cheeky one-act zarzuelas that Madrid audiences adored at the end of the nineteenth century. The story goes that as a medical student he was arrested during the student riots of 1865 and passed the time in custody writing waltzes, which the composer Francisco Asenjo Barbieri later helped bring to the stage.
His great hit was La Gran Vía, written in 1886 with Joaquín Valverde. It was a satirical revue in which the streets and squares of Madrid come to life on stage, singing and dancing, worried about a grand new avenue that was going to be cut through the old city. The joke is that the avenue existed only on paper: work on the real Gran Vía did not begin until 1910. Chueca's tunes were whistled in every street long before the bulldozers arrived.
A century later, this square was in a sorry state. In the 1980s the old Justicia quarter was run-down, with empty shops and a serious drug problem. Then, in the 1990s, gay and lesbian Madrileños began opening bars, cafés, bookshops and businesses here, and the neighbourhood came back to life. Chueca became Spain's best-known LGBT+ barrio and a symbol of the country's transformation.
Every summer, Madrid Pride turns these streets into one of the largest celebrations of its kind in Europe, and in 2017 the city hosted WorldPride. Federico Chueca, the man who set Madrid's streets dancing, would probably approve. Now walk a couple of minutes south-west to a square that carries the name of the man who helped change Spain's laws.