Calle de Bernardo López García

Conde Duque·Universidad

The street takes its name from Bernardo López García (Jaén, 1838 – Madrid, 1870), a poet and journalist known for his patriotic ode “El dos de mayo” (1866). He lived and died at number 9 of this street, which until 1925 was called del Portillo, after the Conde Duque gate that closed its northern end until the wall of Philip IV was demolished in 1868.

Before it bore a poet’s name, this street was a gap in the wall: here stood the Conde Duque gate, one of the minor openings in the rampart with which Philip IV enclosed Madrid in the seventeenth century. The wall came down in 1868, but the street remained calle del Portillo for almost sixty more years. Today it links the travesía del Conde Duque with Amaniel, in the Universidad district. The renaming came through a poem. Bernardo López García, a man from Jaén settled in Madrid, published his ode “El dos de mayo” on 2 May 1866, and four lines were enough to make him famous overnight: “the bell and the cannon.” They called him “the bard of the Second of May,” and that success swallowed everything else he wrote. He died of tuberculosis at thirty-one, at number 9 of this very street. In 1925, a committee of Jaén natives living in Madrid renamed the street after him and placed at that number 9 a bronze plaque by the sculptor Jacinto Higueras, with the poet’s profile and scenes of the uprising.

Its names

  • Calle del Portillo (o Portillo del Conde Duque)17th century – 1925
  • Calle de Bernardo López García1925 – actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings