Calle Antonio Bienvenida
Dedicated to Antonio Mejías Jiménez (Caracas, 1922 – Madrid, 1975), the matador known as Antonio Bienvenida. He took his alternativa at Las Ventas on 9 April 1942 and left through the Puerta Grande of that ring eleven times, a record that places him third in the arena’s history. He died on 7 October 1975, after being knocked down by a cow at a testing session in El Escorial.
In the Niño Jesús neighborhood, calle de Antonio Bienvenida links calle de Amado Nervo with the glorieta de Fuentidueñas. It belongs to the Retiro colony, an area that from the 1940s onward reserved its streets for names from bullfighting. The plaque was placed around 1975, following the custom of honoring the figure once deceased.
Antonio Mejías Jiménez took the surname “Bienvenida” from a village in Badajoz: that was where his father, also a matador, came from. He took his alternativa at Las Ventas on 9 April 1942 and left through the Puerta Grande of that ring eleven times, a record that places him third in the arena’s history. The end came far from the poster: on 4 October 1975, at a testing session in El Escorial, a cow named “Conocida” knocked him down, and he died three days later. In 1977 the City Council erected a bronze sculptural group in his memory in front of Las Ventas.