Calle Ruiz de Alarcón

When the Jerónimos neighbourhood began to rise in 1865, on land the Crown had ceded between the Paseo del Prado and the old Calle de Granada (today Alfonso XII), its newly traced streets took the names of Golden Age writers. One was named Calle de Alarcón on 6 June that year, and on 7 July 1939 it became Calle de Ruiz de Alarcón. The writer it is named for came from far away. Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza was born around 1581, probably in Taxco. He studied law in Salamanca, crossed the Atlantic and settled in Madrid in 1613. He entered the Council of the Indies as a reporter and held the post until his death, in 1639. Among his plays shines La verdad sospechosa (1634), which the Frenchman Pierre Corneille took as a direct model for Le menteur (1644): a play written by a Mexican in Habsburg Madrid ended up shaping the theatre of France. At number 17 of this street opens the garden of the Royal Spanish Academy, designed by Miguel Aguado de la Sierra and built between 1891 and 1894.