Calle de Luis Vives

Juan Luis Vives was born in Valencia in 1492, into a family of converted Jews persecuted by the Inquisition. His father sent him to study outside Spain while still young, and he never returned: he made his life between Paris, Leuven, Bruges and the English court, where he taught at Oxford and knew Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More at first hand. He always wrote in Latin, and argued for a more humane teaching and organised care for the poor. He died in Bruges in 1540. The street had an earlier life under another name. When it entered the municipal register in 1902 it was called Cervantes, and barely a year later the city council gave it the name it keeps. It runs between calle de Cartagena and calle de Vinaroz, in Ciudad Jardín, one of Chamartín’s villa estates.