The fight to save poet Vicente Aleixandre’s house in Madrid

Campaigners want government action to save Velintonia, where the Spanish poet received writers including Federico Garcia Lorca

The cedar-dwarfed, pale yellow house at 3 Vicente Aleixandre Street in north-west Madrid wasn't always the damp, silent and neglected place it is now. Nor was it always 3 Vicente Aleixandre Street.

For almost half a century, it was known as Velintonia, the semi-mythical house where the Nobel-prize winning Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre wrote and received poets and writers including Federico Garcia Lorca, who used to read his works aloud there and play the living room piano.