Calle de López de Hoyos

Behind the name is Juan López de Hoyos, born in Madrid around 1530, the son of a blacksmith, who ended up running the city’s school. He was ordained a priest, won the chair of Grammar by public examination and later became a parish priest and chronicler of the town. He admired Erasmus and taught Latin, rhetoric and poetry to the sons of Madrid. Among those pupils passed a young Miguel de Cervantes. When Queen Elisabeth of Valois died in 1568, the town council commissioned López de Hoyos to compile the book of verses written for the funeral rites. In it he included four poems by his pupil, whom he called his dear and beloved disciple. Those pages, printed in 1569, are the first appearance of Cervantes in print. Calle de López de Hoyos began as a royal road: the old route out of Madrid towards the village of Hortaleza, later a highway and today one of the long arteries of the north-east.