Calle de Leonor de la Vega
Recalls Leonor Lasso de la Vega, a Cantabrian noblewoman of the Vega line, whose surname comes from the pre-Roman word for the fertile flat land beside a river.
Calle de Leonor de la Vega recalls one of the great ladies of northern Castile. Leonor Lasso de la Vega, who died in 1432, headed the Cantabrian Vega line and was the mother, by her second marriage to the admiral Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, of Íñigo López de Mendoza, first Marquis of Santillana, poet and man of arms. From her he received the estates that anchored the Mendoza power in the north.
The second surname is what gives the street its meaning. Vega comes from a pre-Roman word, vaica, which named the low, damp, fertile land stretched along a riverbank. The word suits this corner of the Imperial district, built over the old meadows the Manzanares watered south of the town.
No record survives of the year or the reason the Madrid street map chose this lady.