Calle Trueba
It recalls Antonio de Trueba, the Biscayan poet nicknamed “Antón el de los Cantares.”
Antonio María de Trueba y de la Quintana (Galdames, Biscay, 1819 – Bilbao, 1889) gave his name to this street in Adelfas. The son of farmers, he came to Madrid as a boy to work as a clerk in an ironmonger’s, a trade he left as soon as he could live by writing.
His fame arrived in 1852 with El libro de los cantares, a collection of popular verses built on the couplets and refrains that circulated among ordinary people. Success was immediate and readers dubbed him “Antón el de los Cantares.” Rosalía de Castro acknowledged the debt her Cantares gallegos owed to that book.
Calle de Trueba is a short stretch of Adelfas bearing the name of a writer who went from the ironmonger’s storeroom to the anthologies of popular poetry.