Calle del Alcalde Sáinz de Baranda

The name honours Pedro Sáinz de Baranda y Gorriti (1775-1855), a Madrid man who reached the mayoralty in turbulent years and whom the city remembers as its first mayor in the modern sense, unlike the old magistrates who came before. He first took charge of the city around 1808, when the war against the French had left it without its authorities. In 1820 he was chosen mayor by popular acclaim and had the king swear to uphold the Constitution of 1812. A committed liberal, he went into exile in France when Ferdinand VII restored absolute rule, crossing paths in Bordeaux with the writer Moratín and with Goya. The street was once calle del Límite, because it marked the southern edge of the eastern expansion district; it took its present name in the 1940s. The metro station bearing his surname runs close by.