A Public Nuisance
This chapter documents the early presence of organilleros in the streets of Spanish cities from the 1860s on and analyzes their impact on Madrid’s society during the ensuing decades. Considered an exotic amusement during the 1860s, organilleros came to be seen as sources of “noise” and social disorder soon after. Although the information available on organilleros makes it hard to describe their social background accurately, it is likely that some of them were rural immigrants who took up organ grinding intermittently when other sources of income failed. Their impact on the public sphere raised awareness about the effects of sound and prompted legal measures that could be considered as the first attempts to spread an “aural” hygiene in Madrid. For this reason, organilleros played a key role in the modernization of this city.