Calle José María Sánchez Silva

Calle José María Sánchez Silva recalls the writer who invented Marcelino, the boy who shares his bread with an image of Christ. Born in Madrid in 1911, he lost his mother as a small child and grew up in care institutions. There he learned shorthand and typing, two trades that pushed him towards newsrooms. From 1939 he worked at the newspaper Arriba, where he rose to deputy editor. His name became tied to a 1953 story: Marcelino, pan y vino, about an orphan raised by friars who talks with an image of the crucified Christ. Two years later, Ladislao Vajda brought it to the screen and won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival. The tale kept earning its author prizes: the National Literature Prize in 1957 and, in 1968, the Hans Christian Andersen Award. He wrote nearly fifty works and died in Madrid in 2002. The street traces one of the edges of the sector developed by the Club Santiago compensation board, beside the Avenida de la Guindalera and Calle Luis Carandell.