Calle de Antonio Nebrija

The street takes its name from Elio Antonio de Nebrija (c. 1444–1522), a grammarian and humanist born in Lebrija (Seville), author in 1492 of the Grammar of the Castilian Language, considered the first printed grammar of a European vernacular. Nebrija taught in Salamanca and died in Alcalá de Henares on 2 July 1522. The street, in the Pacífico district south of the Retiro park, belongs to the late-19th and early-20th-century fabric where place names honouring figures of Spanish culture predominate.

The calle de Antonio Nebrija runs between the avenida de la Ciudad de Barcelona and the edge of Atocha station, in the Pacífico district. The area emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century, within the expansion laid out by Carlos María de Castro, on land where the MZA railway lines shaped from the outset how the blocks were arranged. As the city grew, the City Council named streets after figures of Spanish culture, though no record survives of the exact year this name was fixed. Antonio de Nebrija signed his name so because he Latinised the name of his town, Lebrija. He taught grammar in Salamanca, and his magic year was 1492: he brought out the Latin-Spanish Dictionary and the Grammar of the Castilian Language, dedicated to Queen Isabella. In its prologue he wrote the line still quoted today, language was always the companion of empire. He died in Alcalá de Henares in 1522. The street holds a surprise: La Neomudéjar, an art centre set up in the old workshops the MZA built around 1885, its iron structures still standing.

Sources (6)