Plaza del Poeta Manuel del Palacio

Named for Manuel del Palacio (1831-1906), a satirical poet and journalist of the nineteenth century, one of the sharpest pens of his time.

The name pays tribute to Manuel del Palacio y Simó (Lérida, 1831 - Madrid, 1906), who lived by his wit and his pen in nineteenth-century Madrid. A journalist first of all, he edited the magazine El Nene, where a young Bécquer published his first verses, and founded the satirical Gil Blas. His political verses pricked the powerful with such precision that they earned him lawsuits for libel and, in 1867, exile to Puerto Rico for a few sonnets too brazen against Isabella II. The anecdote that best captures him came from a literary quarrel. When Clarín declared that Spain had only “two and a half poets” and assigned him the half, Palacio took that half-promotion so badly that he answered with a whole pamphlet, Clarín entre dos platos. The critic replied by titling his own A 0,50 poeta. He joined the Royal Spanish Academy in 1892. The square that bears his name opens in El Viso, the district of little villas that rose in Chamartín in the 1920s and 1930s.