Calle de Federico Salmón

Behind the name is a jurist from Alicante who made his career in Murcia and reached the heights of Spanish politics while still young. Federico Salmón Amorín (1900-1936) took his law degree in Madrid, worked as a state lawyer in Murcia, and ran a newspaper there before joining the CEDA, the great right-wing coalition of the Second Republic. He served as Minister of Labor and, in the governments of 1935, took on Justice as well, plenty of posts for a man barely past thirty. His most visible mark is not on this street but scattered across the whole city. In June 1935 he pushed through the law against forced unemployment, which offered tax breaks and loans to build rental housing and give work to jobless laborers. That law produced thousands of very similar buildings that came to be known as “casas Salmón,” still recognizable around Madrid, almost a signature in stone spread through the neighborhoods. Arrested when the Civil War broke out, he was executed in the Paracuellos del Jarama massacre on 7 November 1936, at thirty-six.