Calle de Andrés Mellado

Gaztambide·Vallehermoso

Recalls Andrés Mellado y Fernández (1846-1913), a journalist from Málaga, director of El Imparcial and mayor of Madrid, to whom the city dedicated the street in 1893.

Before it took a journalist’s name, this street in Gaztambide was called Tarifa. The change came in December 1893, when Madrid wanted to honor one of the most influential press figures of its time. Born in Málaga in 1846, Andrés Mellado studied law but ended up devoted to the newspaper. For ten years he ran El Imparcial, the great daily of Restoration Madrid, and from that platform he moved into politics: deputy, senator, governor of the Bank of Spain and minister. Between 1889 and 1890 he was mayor of Madrid, remembered for balancing municipal coffers that rarely added up. Where the street fades out, a hospital against cholera and plague was built. Poorly ventilated from the first brick, it proved useless and closed in 1905, barely a decade after opening.