Calle de Campomanes

Calle de Campomanes links the plaza de Isabel II with the cuesta de Santo Domingo, in the Palacio district. Its course curves for no apparent reason, and the reason is buried: it traces the old perimeter of the convent of Santo Domingo el Real, one of Madrid’s oldest medieval monasteries, which held royal tombs and was demolished in 1869 to widen the square. On that site the street was born. The name recalls Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (Tineo, 1723 – Madrid, 1803), an Asturian of modest family who at fifteen was translating Justinian and came to master six languages. Under Charles III he reached the offices that truly moved the kingdom: prosecutor and then governor of the Council of Castile, he freed the grain trade, curbed the privileges of the Mesta, and in 1775 founded the Royal Economic Society of Madrid. Charles III made him a count in 1780. In time the street gathered tenants who portray the political voice of the Restoration, and in 1982 it opened the first bicycle parking that Madrid’s City Council ever planned.