Callejón de Peyré
The street is named after the Gascon writer Joseph Peyré (1892–1968), winner of the 1935 Prix Goncourt with the bullfighting novel Sang et Lumières. Peyré lived in Madrid during the Second Republic and published several Spanish-themed works. The official street register lists it as “Calle de Peyre” or “Calle Peyre”, without the accent.
The Callejón de Peyré, which the official register also lists as Calle de Peyre, runs parallel to Doctor Esquerdo, in the Fuente del Berro neighbourhood. It is a tiny street: it reaches only numbers 4 and 6.
Behind the name is a French writer who fell in love with Spain. Joseph Peyré, a Gascon born in Aydie in 1892 and dead in Cannes in 1968, won the 1935 Prix Goncourt with Sang et Lumières, a bullfighting novel. He lived in Madrid during the Second Republic and was still here when the 1936 uprising broke out. Those years produced Spanish-themed books such as Guadalquivir and El puente de las suertes.
The surname has its own mountain root: it comes from the Occitan peyra, “stone”. Anyone who stops here is reading, without knowing it, a word of stone written on a street with two doorways.
Sources (6)
- Joseph Peyre — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Joseph Peyré, «novelista de España», autor de «El Puente De Las Suertes» — Euromundo Global
- Edificio de calle Peyre ocupado — Zona Retiro
- El Corte Inglés entrega su edificio de Peyre para ampliar el de Serrano — Zona Retiro
- Joseph Peyré (1892–1968) en el corazón de España — Instituto Cervantes Burdeos
- Calle de Peyre — Callejero.net