Plaza de San Juan de la Cruz

Named after Saint John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Discalced Carmelite who wrote the summit of Spanish mystical poetry.

The name evokes Juan de Yepes Álvarez, the Discalced Carmelite who in 1577, locked in a Toledo cell by his own brethren, composed from memory the first verses of the Spiritual Canticle. His work crowns Castilian mystical poetry, alongside the Dark Night of the Soul. The square opens onto the paseo de la Castellana, in Ríos Rosas, around a monumental fountain from the sixties. On one side stands the Carmelite parish that bears his name. Since the late twentieth century the roundabout has displayed The Hand, by Fernando Botero. The poet who wrote in the dark lends his name to a square crossed without pause by the traffic of the Castellana.