Calle de Modesto Lafuente

The name recalls Modesto Lafuente Zamalloa, born in 1806 in a village in the Palencia highlands and dead in Madrid in 1866. He studied theology and became a seminary teacher, but ended up trading the pulpit for the pen and made his living as a historian, journalist, and satirist. His greatest fame came through a paper character. Under the pen name Fray Gerundio, a biting friar accompanied by his servant Pelegrín de Tirabeque, he published satirical sheets, the capilladas, read all over Spain and needling the politics of the day with humor. That disguise let him say in jest what would otherwise have cost him trouble. His most ambitious work was the Historia general de España, some thirty volumes that served for generations as a reference manual. The street runs through Ríos Rosas between the Paseo del General Martínez Campos and Calle de Raimundo Fernández Villaverde.