Calle Ponce de León

The name leads to a sailor who turned a landfall into a christening. Juan Ponce de León, born around 1474, governed Puerto Rico and, seeking lands to the north, sighted an unknown coast in March 1513. He arrived at Easter, the feast of the Resurrection that the Spanish linked with the season of flowers, and found the shore covered in greenery. From that double motive came the name the state still bears: La Florida. A legend later stuck to his life that he had little to do with: the fountain of eternal youth, a spring that would return the years to whoever drank from it. No contemporary chronicle places him chasing that water; the myth grew later. He died in 1521 from an arrow taken on the very coast he had named. Calle de Ponce de León opened in 19th-century Almagro, a short stretch among stately buildings.