Calle de Cervantes

Barrio de las Letras·Cortes

Named after Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), author of Don Quixote, the most influential novel in the Spanish language. Formerly Calle de Francos, after a neighbouring family; it took the writer’s name in 1835, because he died in 1616 in the house on the corner of Calle del León.

Cervantes lived in several houses in this district, and in the one on the corner of today’s Calle del León he died on 22 April 1616. That building was demolished in 1833. On the façade of its replacement, around 1834, a relief with the writer’s likeness was set, along with an inscription paid for out of pocket by Manuel Fernández Varela, commissioner of the Crusade. Until then the street was called Calle de Francos. It was in 1835 that it changed its name to honour the author of Don Quixote, who had lived and died a few steps away.

Its names

  • Calle de Francosh.15th century – 1835
  • Calle del Duque de Alburquerque (tramo inferior)h.18th century – h.1835
  • Calle de Cervantes1835
Sources (7)

Crossings