Calle de Alonso Castrillo

The name honours Demetrio Alonso Castrillo (1841-1916), a lawyer and Liberal Party politician born in Valderas, in León, who sat in the Cortes for more than two decades, first as a deputy and from 1906 as a life senator. In early 1911 José Canalejas appointed him minister of the Interior, and by 1912 he held the post of civil governor of Madrid. On the morning of 12 November that year Canalejas had asked him to go to the Retiro, where the king was opening a chrysanthemum show. Hours later the prime minister stopped before the window of the San Martín bookshop, in the Puerta del Sol, and was shot by the anarchist Manuel Pardiñas. The street was earlier called calle de San Pedro and marked the northern edge of Madrid until the annexation of Chamartín de la Rosa in 1948. Today it runs between Bravo Murillo and Infanta Mercedes, in the Castillejos neighbourhood.