Plaza de Mariano de Cavia

On 25 November 1891, Madrid residents woke to the news that the Prado Museum was burning. The report, published in El Liberal, described rooms taken by fire, paintings lost, smoke over the avenue. The next day, the same paper ran an article titled “Why have I set fire to the Prado Museum?”: the fire had never happened. Its author had invented it to shake up authorities who had done nothing after two real fires that same year. The trick worked, and forced concrete repairs to the building. The man behind that report was Mariano de Cavia, born in Zaragoza in 1855. He studied law without finishing and around 1881 moved to Madrid, where for decades he wrote for the great liberal dailies. Under the pen name “Sobaquillo” he penned bullfighting columns with an irony that hooked even those who did not follow the bulls. The Royal Academy elected him unanimously in 1916, but his health kept him from taking his seat. He died in 1920, and two days later ABC created the Mariano de Cavia Prize, still today one of the oldest awards in Spanish journalism. Plaza de Mariano de Cavia occupies the point where the Paseo de la Reina Cristina and the Avenida de Menéndez Pelayo meet, between the Pacífico and Jerónimos neighborhoods. Since 1962 a fountain of birds in flight has presided over it.