Calle de los Hermanos Bécquer
The street bears the name of Gustavo Adolfo and Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer, Seville-born brothers of Romanticism who died in Madrid in 1870. Both appear on the sign thanks to an article the journalist Mariano de Cavia published in El Imparcial on 29 February 1916, which persuaded the City Council not to limit the tribute to the poet alone.
Calle de los Hermanos Bécquer opened around 1916 in the Salamanca district’s ensanche. The City Council wanted to honour a single name, that of the poet Gustavo Adolfo. Then a journalist stepped in.
Mariano de Cavia published an article in El Imparcial recalling something nearly forgotten: while Gustavo Adolfo wrote his Cartas desde mi celda at the monastery of Veruela, his brother Valeriano drew at his side, a genre painter capturing the characters of the Moncayo. The council agreed and named the street in the plural, for both.
The detail that moves anyone who stops before the plaque: the two died the same autumn of 1870, months apart. Gustavo Adolfo buried his brother and barely outlived him by three months. The street they share gave them back the company they had in life.
Sources (7)
- Los hermanos Bécquer en el distrito de Salamanca — dsalamanca.es
- Una calle para Bécquer — Ayuntamiento de La Muela (fuente primaria: El Imparcial, 29-II-1916)
- Calle de Hermanos Bécquer — Madripedia
- Calle de los Hermanos Bécquer — Wikidata (Q28058956)
- Mariano de Cavia (electo, 1915) — Real Academia Española
- Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer — Wikipedia
- Domínguez Bécquer, Valeriano — Museo Nacional del Prado