Calle de Pedro Heredia

The street was born within the Quinta del Espíritu Santo, a colony of second homes that Pascual Madoz built around the mid-nineteenth century beside the Abroñigal stream. The venture never turned a profit, but the streets it had laid out remained. Until 1903 this one was called Calle de Valencia, and a municipal agreement of 30 December that year gave it the name it carries today. Pedro de Heredia was a Madrilenian of gentry stock. He crossed to the New World fleeing a brawl in Madrid that had cost him his nose, later rebuilt with tissue from his own arm. In 1533 he founded Cartagena de Indias and from there pushed into present-day Colombia. He died in 1554 when his ship went down off the coast of Cádiz, as he returned to Spain to answer to the courts. Pedro de Répide noted a small and charming detail: the Bécquer brothers lived here when the street was still called de Valencia.

Pedro de Répide documented in “Las calles de Madrid” that the brothers Gustavo Adolfo and Valeriano Bécquer had resided on this street, then called Calle de Valencia, in the Fuente del Berro colony. Répide also published a feature about the place in the magazine La Esfera on 19 August 1922, accompanied by Julia Domínguez, daughter of Valeriano and niece of Gustavo.