Plaza de Jacinto Benavente

Sol

The square owes its name to Jacinto Benavente y Martínez (Madrid, 1866–1954), playwright and winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Literature. The council dedicated it to him on 31 July 1929, at the request of the Madrid Press Association and other cultural bodies, a few years after naming him Favourite Son of the city in 1924.

Before it was a single square, this corner was two medieval plazas that turned their backs on each other: the Aduana Vieja, after the customs house that Charles III moved to Alcalá in 1769, and the Leña, where the comuneros are said to have piled up timber for a barricade. The transformation came between 1897 and 1926, when Calle del Doctor Cortezo was opened over a demolished convent and the houses closing the junction of Carretas, Atocha and Concepción Jerónima were pulled down. This created a knot of seven streets that works as a vestibule to the Barrio de las Letras. Its oldest building, the House of the Five Major Guilds (1788), became the first headquarters of the Bank of Spain. In 1998 its most endearing resident appeared: a bronze sculpture of a street sweeper, by Félix Hernando García, still sweeping tirelessly for anyone who stops to look.

Its names

  • Plazuela de la Leña16th century – c. 1875
  • Plazuela de la Aduana Vieja17th century – 31 enero 1881
  • Plaza de la Aduana Vieja1 enero 1881 – 1929
  • Plaza de Jacinto Benavente31 julio 1929 – presente
Sources (9)

Crossings