Calle Condes de Torreanaz

Calle Condes de Torreanaz. A plural name that hides two men, uncle and nephew, who inherited the same title and wore it with almost identical résumés. The first, Luis María de la Torre y de la Hoz, was born in Ánaz (Cantabria) in 1827. Alfonso XII granted him the county in 1875. A lawyer, he reached the Congress, gained a lifetime Senate seat and ran the Bank of Spain for seven months of 1899. The day he left the bank he joined Silvela’s cabinet as minister of Grace and Justice. He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and wrote a history of law, Los Consejos del Rey en la Edad Media. He was succeeded by his nephew, Ramón Fernández-Hontoria y García de la Hoz, born in Puerto Príncipe (Cuba) in 1853, whose career seems an echo of his uncle’s: deputy for Santander, undersecretary of the Presidency of the Council, lifetime senator and member of the same academy. The place name keeps the trace of that land: Torreánaz comes from the palace the family held in Ánaz, in the Cantabrian municipality of Medio Cudeyo.