Parque Machado, Polanco

Photos: Alcaldía Miguel Hidalgo

The Parque Machado is famous principally for being directly across the street from the National Conservatory of Music. A small neighborhood park, the Machado makes a nice break after pounding the pavement in Polanco, or wandering the furthest western stretches of the Avenida Masaryk is located this small park that is ideal for you if you are looking for a quiet and uncrowded place.

The park is centered around a monument to the poets who perished during the Spanish Civil War.

• Antonio Machado Ruiz (1875-1939) is remembered as a bloved poet of Spain and the youngest of the “Generation of ’98.” The Generación de 1898 is strongly associated with the emergence of Modernism in Spain at the time of the Spanish–American War. Machado’s own Modernist poetry echoed ancient popular wisdom and became increasingly important as the Second Spanish Republic gave way to the war with Franco. Machado died in exile in France in 1939.

The Parque Machado was originally designed by Spanish-Mexican architect, José Luis Benlliure. He’s probably best remembered in Mexico City for the giant 1961 Aristos Building at the corner of Insurgentes and Aguascalientes in La Condesa. Benlliure died just two years after work on the park. It was especially intended to commemorate the exiles from Spain who’d arrived in Mexico between 1939 and 1942.

A 2014 rehabilitation of the park lasted two full years and included the restoration of the existing park and the construction of a pergola and fountain.