Plaza de José Moreno Villa

Few figures of the Generation of '27 gathered as many trades as José Moreno Villa (Málaga, 1887 - Mexico City, 1955). He studied chemical analysis in Germany and came back a poet, draftsman, art critic, translator and archivist. That last role brought him to Madrid: in 1917 he settled into the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he stayed for twenty years. There he knew Lorca, Buñuel and Dalí, and there he wrote much of his work. In 1926, in that same Residencia, he met a young American woman whom posterity would remember as Jacinta. They went so far as to plan the wedding, but a trip to New York ended in a break-up. Out of that heartbreak came his best-remembered book, Jacinta la pelirroja (1929), which he illustrated himself. The war took him into Mexican exile, where he kept painting and writing until his death. Madrid remembered him late: this square officially received his name in 2017, a few minutes from the Residencia where he had lived for twenty years.