Calle de Luis Vélez de Guevara

Calle de Luis Vélez de Guevara slopes gently down from calle de Atocha to calle de la Magdalena, in what in the 17th century was Madrid’s literary heart. For centuries it was called calle de las Urosas, after two sisters who owned houses and a garden where the street was opened. Texeira mislabelled it Rosas in 1656, dropping a letter that 19th-century chroniclers corrected. Something unique in Madrid’s streets happened here: two great Golden Age playwrights lived, died and dictated their wills before the same notary. Juan Ruiz de Alarcón died here in 1639; five years later Luis Vélez de Guevara declared himself “living on calle de las Urosas, sick in body but sound of mind,” and died five days afterwards. His best-remembered work, El diablo cojuelo (1641), imagines a devil who lifts the rooftops of Madrid to spy inside every house. The author who dreamed that city seen from within ended up dying in one of those very tenement houses.

Two playwrights of the Golden Age drew up their wills before the same notary, Lucas del Pozo, on the same street: Juan Ruiz de Alarcón on 1 July 1639, and Luis Vélez de Guevara on 5 November 1644. Alarcón died three days after signing his; Vélez de Guevara, five. The street that today bears the name of one also sheltered the final days of the other.