Calle Conde de Elda

The street takes its name from the County of Elda, a title created on 14 May 1577 by Philip II in favour of Juan Coloma y Cardona, 3rd Lord of Elda and viceroy of Sardinia. The street, about 105 metres long in La Guindalera, was opened during the expansion of the eastern Extension in the last decades of the 19th century. The exact date of naming and the municipal agreement have not been found.

The name comes from a county born far from Madrid, in the south of the old Kingdom of Valencia. There, Philip II gathered the lordships of Elda, Petrer and Salinas and, on 14 May 1577, created the County of Elda for Juan Coloma y Cardona, 3rd Lord of Elda and viceroy of Sardinia. When jurisdictional lordships were abolished in 1837, the county survived as pure noble distinction, with no lands left to govern. The title was held for almost all the second half of the 19th century by María del Pilar Osorio y Gutiérrez de los Ríos, born in Madrid in 1829 and dead near Namur in 1921, aged ninety-one. She was also 3rd Duchess of Fernán-Núñez and served as lady-in-waiting to three queens in a row: Isabella II, María de las Mercedes and María Cristina. The Calle Conde de Elda runs through La Guindalera, whose street map filled with noble titles, a widespread custom in the Madrid of the time. The sign came late: it does not appear in Répide’s work, a sign it was put up after he had passed through here.

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