Who was Joaquín Sorolla? The painter behind Carrer del Pintor Sorolla in Valencia

Joaquín Sorolla's life, from Valencia to Madrid

According to the Museo Sorolla, he was born in Valencia on 27 February 1863 to a family of cloth merchants. Both his parents died in an epidemic when he was two, and he and his sister were taken in by their maternal uncles.

He trained in his home city. The Museu de Belles Arts de València records that he began at the Escuelas de Artesanos in 1876 and entered the San Carlos school of fine arts in 1878. In 1885 the Diputación de Valencia gave him a grant to study in Rome, and on 8 September 1888 he married Clotilde García del Castillo in Valencia.

The Grand Prix at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 was, in the Museo Sorolla's words, the prize that fully consolidated his international reputation. From 1911 he lived in the house he had built in Madrid, and in 1920 a stroke left him unable to paint.

He died in Cercedilla, near Madrid, on 10 August 1923, and his tomb is in the Cementerio General de Valencia, where the Museo Sorolla organised a floral tribute for the centenary of his death.

Photo: Joanbanjo, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why Valencia named a street after Sorolla in 1900

The Ajuntament de València says the street has carried his name since 1900 and links it to the Escuela de Artesanos, where the young painter took his first classes. That was the year he won the Grand Prix in Paris.

The street had another name before. The Generalitat's Sorolla route says that in 1900 the city renamed a section of calle de las Barcas after him, as a tribute to his success at exhibitions. Neither text quotes the original council decision, and we have not located it, so this guide does not say who proposed the name.

Where Carrer del Pintor Sorolla is in Valencia

The Ajuntament's street register lists one street with the painter's name, Carrer del Pintor Sorolla, about 300 metres (about 984 ft) long. It runs through Sant Francesc, in the Ciutat Vella district, a short walk from the Plaça de l'Ajuntament.

His name is on a railway station too: Adif, the state rail infrastructure company, runs a Valencia station called València Joaquín Sorolla.

Photo: Joanbanjo, CC BY-SA 3.0

Where to see Sorolla's work in Valencia today

The Museu de Belles Arts de València owns 54 of his works and shows 46 of them in the Sala Sorolla, on the third floor of its cloister building, which it presented in July 2023. Entry is free, and the museum opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 20:00.

His birthplace, the city museums that hold his paintings, the beach at El Cabanyal and his monument in El Grau are all on our self-guided Sorolla route through Valencia, which links them on foot and by tram in a day.

His house and studio is in Madrid, not Valencia. His widow, Clotilde García del Castillo, left it to the Spanish State in her will of 1925, and it opened as the Museo Sorolla in 1932.

Photo: Bene Riobó, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why some Valencia streets changed name in 2017

On 26 May 2017 the Ajuntament's Junta de Gobierno Local approved a set of street-name changes, published in the DOGV, the Generalitat's official journal, on 27 June 2017. The Ajuntament's campaign page counts 51 streets, while the list it publishes has 52 pairs of old and new names: one of them is the street that already bore the name Amado Granell Mesado, which became Manuela Solís Claràs. The files had been opened in 2016, and most of the names came from a report by the Universitat de València's Aula d'Història i Memòria Democràtica.

The legal basis was article 15 of Spain's Historical Memory Law, Ley 52/2007, which asked public administrations to remove names and mentions exalting the 1936 military uprising, the Civil War or the repression of the dictatorship. Two examples: Avenida del Baró de Càrcer became Avinguda de l'Oest, and Avenida General Urrutia became Avinguda Amado Granell Mesado.

Four names were kept with a new stated meaning: Plaza de América, Calle de Belchite, Plaza de Galicia and Avenida de Portugal. Both names stayed on the street signs for the first twelve months. Ley 52/2007 has since been repealed by Ley 20/2022 de Memoria Democrática.

One of the changes was later reversed. The municipal minutes of the ordinary session of 25 February 2022 record that a private individual challenged the renaming of Plaza Profesor López-Ibor as Plaza Grup Parpalló and won: València's Juzgado de lo Contencioso-Administrativo nº 3 ruled in the claimant's favour (judgment 135/2019 of 17 April 2019), and the TSJ of the Comunitat Valenciana dismissed the city's appeal (judgment 387 of 1 September 2021, clarified by an order of 30 December 2021). The Junta de Gobierno Local then ordered the name Plaza Profesor López-Ibor restored. We have read the minutes, not the court judgments themselves.

Carrer del Pintor Sorolla does not appear in the 2017 agreements, neither as a removed name nor as a new one.