Calle Bolívar

Legazpi·Delicias

Honours Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan soldier who in the early nineteenth century led much of South America to independence.

The name evokes Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), the man from Caracas who spent two decades detaching from the Spanish crown the territories that are today Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia. His figure weighed so heavily that Upper Peru, on becoming a nation, renamed itself in his honour: hence Bolivia. The liberator’s surname came from the north of Spain: the Bolívars came from Ziortza-Bolibar, in Vizcaya, and an ancestor sailed for America in the mid-sixteenth century. The street lies in the Legazpi neighbourhood and drops from the plaza de Legazpi toward the park and the planetarium. The neighbourhood takes its name from Miguel López de Legazpi, who brought the Philippines into the Spanish monarchy; the street, by contrast, recalls the man who three centuries later broke those American viceroyalties away from it.