Calle del Cardenal Silíceo

The man who gives this Prosperidad street its name was born around 1486 in Villagarcía de la Torre, in Badajoz, and was called Juan Martínez Guijarro. Of humble family, he herded livestock as a boy. He left young for Valencia and then Paris, where he studied Latin, dialectic and logic, and rose to be a university professor. In those years he changed his surname to its Latin form: silex means flint, pebble; thus “Silíceo” was born, the name under which he would sign his treatises on arithmetic and logic. Charles V appointed him tutor to Prince Philip, the future Philip II, around 1534. Once the heir’s education was finished, he became bishop of Cartagena in 1541, archbishop of Toledo from 1545 and cardinal in 1555. In Toledo he founded the College of Noble Maidens. He died there in 1557. The calle del Cardenal Silíceo runs between López de Hoyos and Corazón de María, in the Prosperidad quarter.