Calle Moreto
It bears the name of Agustín Moreto y Cabaña (Madrid, 1618 – Toledo, 1669), a Golden Age playwright who premiered works at the Coliseo del Buen Retiro under Philip IV. The street names of the Jerónimos neighbourhood group the monarchs of the House of Austria and the playwrights of their court along neighbouring streets.
Calle de Calderón de la Barca and Calle de Vélez de Guevara lie a step away, and not by chance: Moreto was given a playwrights' neighbourhood. Agustín Moreto y Cabaña came into the world in Madrid in 1618, into a family of Italian roots. He trained at the University of Alcalá de Henares and took his degree in Arts in 1639.
By 1644 he was already working shoulder to shoulder with the greats: he collaborated with Calderón de la Barca and Luis Vélez de Guevara on a play staged before Philip IV at the Coliseo del Buen Retiro. His best-known comedy, El desdén, con el desdén (1654), travelled far: Molière reworked it as La Princesse d’Élide (1664). With El lindo don Diego (1662) he fixed for the Spanish stage the figurón, that vain and ridiculous suitor who would prove so useful later.
In 1659 he was ordained a priest and moved to Toledo in the service of the archbishop. He died there in 1669. The street runs along the southern flank of the Prado Museum and ends at the Plaza de Murillo.