Avenida de Menéndez Pelayo

For years, this avenue was really three separate streets. The stretch that begins at Calle de Alcalá and drops to Calle de O’Donnell was called Calle de Muñoz. From O’Donnell to the Plaza del Niño Jesús one walked along the Ronda de Vicálvaro. And the final stretch was the Ronda de Vallecas. In 1915 the city council joined the three names into one and chose that of the Santander scholar Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (1856-1912). Few went so far so soon. He won his chair in 1878, barely past the minimum legal age to sit the examination. He directed the National Library and the Royal Academy of History, and belonged to the four main royal academies at once. He gathered a personal library of nearly forty thousand books, which he left to Santander, where it remains open to the public. The avenue today skirts the whole eastern flank of the Retiro Park and crosses the neighbourhoods of Jerónimos, Ibiza, Niño Jesús and Pacífico. Metro Line 1 runs beneath it.