HISTORICAL

Baltasar was a humble Madrilenian of Lavapiés, that lived with his wife and his four children in a ramshackle room, without windows to the outside, in a house of a courtyard, at Salitre street. A trachea operation, distorted his voice and a hoarse and weak voice was the unique thing that left his damaged throat. He gained his life driving a lended simón –a kind of carriage-, thrown by an old jamelgo and transported travelling from the Station of Atocha to the destiny that the travellers indicated to him. It shared the road with some motor vehicles, cars and vans, that already were beginning to be seen by the streets of Madrid.

The 6th March 1929, he exchanged some words his neighbor, a coal miner who had a business on the number 31 of Salitre street, while he was coming back home after work. Then, he saw how a light truck that lowered with shaking by the zooming hill that formed the street, made an abrupt maneuver to avoid the upsetting of an old woman. The consequence was an abrupt push to a beers distributor’s covered wagon who was unloading the wood barrels, leaving them fall on a burlap coat in order to cushion the blow and to avoid flaws.

As the covered wagon mules were scared, they began a stampede race in the direction of a group of four children who were playing absent-minded. Baltasar warned himself of what was going on and tried to shout the boys so they move over, but his throat did not emit any audible sound for the boys; without thinking it twice, he ran between the mule and the children, trying to restrain with his arms the weight of the animals, the covered cart and its load of barrels. Without result the car passed over Baltasar but he got it to turn aside its trajectory and that the noise alerted to the boys.

This heroic act cost his life and six days later he died. The press of those days advised what had occurred and public subscriptions were opened to collect some money for the orphans and the widow. In his burial, two crowns of flowers one of the Society of Caleche drivers of the UGT (General Union of Workers), of which he was leader and another one of the City council, were the dumb tribute to the act of bravery of this humble man. And Primo de Rivera, that in that time commanded in the destinies of Spain, promised to help the widow and to change the name to the street, that then was called Salitre, by the self-sacrificing caleche driver.

Thus it was that, when there was a post, Baltasar’s wife was hired by the City council for the service of public toilets. On the Civil War, one of her children died in the front of Madrid and she was fired for political reasons. On the other hand, the street changed of name and, since then, it was known as Baltasar Bachero, as a tribute to his heroic act.

In 1967, the Seminary of Urban Toponymy -already extinguished- decided to replace the old name of Salitre street. Without repairing that this last name made reference to a warehouse of saltpeter that provided to a powder mill already disappeared many years ago and that Baltasar Bachero, neighbor of that street, had a heroic behavior and he was not simply a worker during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.