Calle de Menéndez Pidal

The man who gives the street its name lived on it. Ramón Menéndez Pidal (La Coruña, 1869 - Madrid, 1968) built his house between 1922 and 1925 on what was then Cuesta del Zarzal, a lane on the outskirts of Chamartín ringed by olive trees, and there he gathered his vast working library. After his death, nearly a hundred years old, the city council renamed the slope after him. A philologist and historian, he brought scientific rigour to the study of the language and of medieval texts in Spain. His work on the ballad tradition began in 1900, during his honeymoon with his wife María Goyri, as they followed the route of the Cid’s exile. On that journey a washerwoman sang them old ballads she kept by heart, and from that discovery came the Archivo del Romancero. Those who were children in the neighbouring fields recalled that don Ramón, by then an old man, would toss back over the wall the balls that fell into his garden.