Plaza de Rubén Darío

Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, born in the Nicaraguan village of Metapa in 1867, signed his work as Rubén Darío and reinvented verse in Spanish. With Azul (1888) and, above all, Prosas profanas and Cantos de vida y esperanza, he opened modernism: a new musicality, princesses, gardens and, as a recurring emblem, the swan. He lived in Madrid several times, the first in 1892 as part of the Nicaraguan delegation to the fourth centenary of the Discovery. The square was born with another name. It was the Glorieta del Cisne, named after a nearby fountain in which a lead swan appeared under attack by a serpent. In October 1922, six years after the poet’s death, the city council dedicated the junction to him. The coincidence of the old swan with Darío’s favorite animal did not go unnoticed. Since 1967 a bust of the Nicaraguan, by José Planes, watches over the spot, surrounded by the chamfered mansions of the Ensanche de Castro.