Avenida de Alberto Alcocer

Alberto Alcocer y Ribacoba (1886-1957) was born in Orduña, in Vizcaya, worked as a lawyer and served twice as mayor of Madrid. The first stint was brief, under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The second, from 1939 to 1946, at the head of a city just emerging from war. The street came late to the map: it was named in 1960, when the mayor was already dead and northern Madrid was spreading over old pasturelands. Today the Avenida de Alberto Alcocer is one of Chamartín’s wide arteries, far from the tight grid of old Madrid. The surname echoed beyond politics: a grandson, Alberto Alcocer Torra, made a name for himself in Spanish banking decades later.