Calle Juan de la Cueva

Calle Juan de la Cueva, in the Niño Jesús neighbourhood, recalls a Sevillian playwright and poet of the Golden Age, baptised in 1543 at the church of Santa Catalina in Seville. He trained in the school of the humanist Juan de Mal Lara and frequented the gatherings of Francisco Pacheco. Between 1574 and 1577 he crossed the Atlantic to New Spain. Back in Seville came his finest hour: fourteen plays staged in the courtyard theatres between 1579 and 1581, four tragedies and ten comedies, which a printer collected in 1583. Among them are El infamador, Los siete infantes de Lara and La muerte del rey don Sancho, several drawn from old Castilian legends. He did not stop there. He worked in epic verse and set down his ideas on the poet’s craft in the Ejemplar Poético. From 1607 he lived in Cuenca, and when his brother died in 1611 he moved to Granada, where he died in 1612. The street was named following the custom of dedicating these newly developed streets to writers.