Balbuena station
Metro · 1 Line 1
Neighbouring stations
- 1Line 1Moctezuma Balbuena Boulevard Puerto Aéreo
The story behind the icon
The station image represents the flowers of the Balbuena garden.
Bernardo de Balbuena, a Spanish poet born in 1568 in Valdepeñas and dying in 1627 in Puerto Rico, published the poem Mexican Grandeur in 1604.
The Dutch pirates slipped past the walls of El Morro and settled for almost 20 years in San Juan Bautista de Borinquen. When the Spanish troops managed to dislodge them, in revenge they set fire to the city and burned the valuable library of Bishop Balbuena, who never recovered from the loss and died shortly afterwards.
In his writing there is a delicious list of dishes, sweets and above all fruits, which the poet possibly saw as coming from the promised land. He reserves his greatest enthusiasm for the chicozapote. In the Caribbean they called it níspero, and in Pakistan chicu. It reached remote lands such as Trebizond and Cathay on the Manila Galleon. It was the first envoy and agent of the rudimentary foreign trade of the Viceroyalty.