Cuesta de Moyano

The Cuesta de Moyano drops about two hundred meters between the Glorieta del Emperador Carlos V and the Calle de Alfonso XII, grazing the wall of the Botanical Garden. That slope was part of the Real Sitio del Buen Retiro that the Count-Duke of Olivares built for Philip IV from 1632. The name honors Claudio Moyano Samaniego (1809-1890), rector and minister who in 1857 signed the Public Instruction Law, which made primary schooling compulsory and organized the country’s educational levels. His teachers paid by subscription for a bronze monument, unveiled in 1900. The book fair that made the slope famous began in stalls on the Plaza de Atocha and later passed through the Paseo del Prado, until in 1925 it was fixed on the hillside with thirty wooden booths designed by the architect Luis Bellido. Ramón Gómez de la Serna called it the “Anchovy Fair” because many books sold for fifteen céntimos, the same price as an anchovy in the markets.