Calle Luis de Góngora

The street runs down between Gravina and San Lucas, in the Justicia district, the corner half the city now calls Chueca. Its true protagonist is the convent of the Discalced Mercedarians that neighbors renamed “las Góngoras.” Philip IV had it built in 1663, in thanks for the birth of the future Charles II, and placed the work in the hands of Juan Jiménez de Góngora, governor of the Royal Treasury. From that minister, not the poet, the street took its surname, by mere proximity. The City Council changed it on 13 December 1961: it turned Calle de Góngora into Calle de Luis de Góngora to honor the Córdoban writer, who still had no street of his own. So two different men share a surname and a single plaque. Góngora lived in Madrid between 1617 and 1626, in the Barrio de las Letras, until Quevedo bought the house he rented and turned him out. Nothing suggests he ever set foot on the stretch that now bears his name.