Calle de Lope de Rueda

Salamanca·Goya

The street remembers the Seville-born playwright Lope de Rueda (c. 1505-1510 – c. 1565), founder of professional popular theatre in Spain. He created the pasos, short comic pieces that foreshadowed the Golden Age interlude, and toured the peninsula’s main cities with his travelling company.

Calle de Lope de Rueda was laid out from 1860, as the Ensanche was taking shape. Today it begins at Calle de Alcalá and ends at Alcalde Sainz de Baranda, between the Ibiza and Goya neighbourhoods. The man it honours was born in Seville around 1505 and beat metal into sheets before forming the travelling theatre company he toured Spain with. He wrote four prose comedies and short pieces, the pasos, which set the mould for the short comic genre the Baroque would rename the interlude. Cervantes admired him without reservation. He died in Córdoba around 1565. He was buried in the city’s cathedral, in a singular spot: between the two choirs.
Sources (5)