Calle de Gabriel y Galán

Behind the name is a village schoolmaster who left the classroom to till the land and write about it. José María Gabriel y Galán (1870-1905), son of Salamanca farmers, settled on an estate in northern Cáceres and traded the blackboard for the plow without giving up verse. His breakthrough came in 1901, when he won the Floral Games of Salamanca with El ama, an elegy to his dead mother. Castellanas and Extremeñas followed, gathering rural speech and the voice of reapers and shepherds. He died at barely thirty-four, already one of the most widely read poets of the Spanish countryside. The calle de Gabriel y Galán runs a little under three hundred meters among the low houses of the estate, a quiet stretch that recalls the country lanes he so often sang.