Plaza de Juan Zorrilla
It honors Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, Uruguay’s national poet and author of the epic Tabaré, nicknamed in Spain “the American Bécquer.”
The name is deceiving at first glance. It does not recall José Zorrilla, the Spaniard of Don Juan Tenorio, but the Uruguayan Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, considered in his country the first national poet. He won fame in 1879 with La leyenda patria, an ode he composed in a single week.
His great work came in 1888 with Tabaré, an epic poem about the impossible love between the Spanish Blanca and the mixed-race Tabaré, son of a Charrúa chief and a Spanish captive, with the war between Castilians and natives as backdrop. He wrote it over nearly a decade, during the exile imposed on him by the dictator Máximo Santos. In Spain they nicknamed him “the American Bécquer.”
The Plaza de Juan Zorrilla sits in Vallehermoso, tucked between Calle de Ríos Rosas and Calle de Bravo Murillo and the avenues of Filipinas and Pablo Iglesias.