Calle de Espronceda
Recalls José de Espronceda, the foremost poet of Spanish Romanticism, to whom Madrid dedicated this street in 1880.
On 21 July 1880 Madrid gave the name of José de Espronceda to this street that runs between Ponzano and Zurbano, in the heart of the Ríos Rosas neighborhood. It honors the poet who best embodied Spanish Romanticism, born in Almendralejo in 1808.
He came to Madrid early and studied at the Colegio de San Mateo. As a teenager he joined the secret society of the Numantinos, a youthful conspiracy against the absolutism of Ferdinand VII that cost him confinement in a convent. Exile then took him through Portugal, England, Belgium and France; in Paris he threw himself into the revolution of 1830.
Back in Spain he served as deputy, diplomat and journalist while writing verses still recited from memory. His is El estudiante de Salamanca, his the unfinished El diablo mundo, and his the “Canción del pirata,” with that line “con diez cañones por banda” that so many schoolchildren have read aloud. He died in Madrid in 1842, at thirty-four.