Calle de Antonio Grilo

Anyone looking for this street between calle Ancha de San Bernardo and the plaza de los Mostenses, in the Universidad quarter, walks along a road that went from the devout women to the poet who mocked them. On Texeira’s 1656 map it appears as calle de las Beatas (Street of the Devout Women), after a house of Dominican tertiaries that ran there from the mid-16th century. The nuns moved out in 1611, but the street kept the name de las Beatas for almost the whole 19th century. Antonio Fernández Grilo (Córdoba, 1845–1906) came to Madrid as a press writer, though his fame came from elsewhere: he was the favourite reciter of aristocratic salons, and his fire in performance made up for the unevenness of his verses. Alfonso XII gave him a life pension and dubbed him his court poet. He lived at number 24, and when asked where he lived he would quip that he lived on “the street of the two dozen devout women,” crossing his door number with the road’s old name. The line ran through the salons, and the poet ended up giving his name to the street where he had so mocked the nuns who first named it.