Calle de Ercilla

In the mid-nineteenth century, when Las Peñuelas was beginning to fill with factories, this street was opened between the paseo de las Acacias and the paseo de Santa María de la Cabeza. It was named after Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, born in Madrid in 1533, a courtier who ended up the most unusual poet of his generation. Ercilla served the future Philip II from childhood and in 1556 sailed to Chile, where he fought in the Arauco war against the Mapuche. There, between one march and the next, he composed La Araucana, the epic poem that gave voice to both Spanish valor and native resistance. The detail that best captures him is how he wrote: with no paper in mid-campaign, he jotted his verses on tree bark, scraps of leather and pieces of letters, some so small they barely held six lines.