Calle de Juan Esplandiú

Juan Esplandiú Peña was born in 1901 on another central street, the calle de Juan de Mena, and became one of the portraitists of the Madrid that was vanishing. He drew squares, markets and taverns with a melancholy that earned him the nickname “the Utrillo of Old Madrid”, after the painter of Montmartre. His line can still be seen in the newspapers of the day: he worked as an illustrator for the ABC group and illustrated the novels of Galdós and Baroja. In 1957 he won the National Painting Prize. As a young man he had lived in the Paris of the twenties, where he crossed paths with Buñuel and Dalí. He died in Madrid in 1978. The street that bears his name winds through the Estrella neighbourhood, beside the Parque de Roma, and runs more than two kilometres of curves.