Plaza de Legazpi

Miguel López de Legazpi was born in Zumárraga (Gipuzkoa) around 1510 and sailed to New Spain, where he worked as a clerk before the viceroy entrusted him in 1564 with the expedition that would cross the Pacific. On Bohol he sealed a blood pact with the chieftain Sikatuna, and in 1571 he founded Manila. He died there the following year, ruined after funding his own campaigns. The city council named the square in 1926, over an unnamed crossing where the Paseo de las Delicias met the Paseo de la Chopera and the Paseo del Molino. Crossing the Plaza de Legazpi today, you have the old municipal Slaughterhouse (now a cultural centre) on one side and the Central Fruit and Vegetable Market on the other: two brick giants that fed Madrid for decades.