Calle de Marqués de la Romana

The street bears the title of Pedro Caro y Sureda, third Marquis of la Romana, a soldier born in Palma de Mallorca in 1761. His name became tied to one of the most novel-worthy episodes of the Peninsular War. In 1807 Napoleon had sent a Spanish division of some fifteen thousand men to northern Europe, in theory as allies of France. Caro commanded those troops in Denmark when the Madrid uprising against the French broke out. Far from home and closely watched, he secretly arranged an evacuation with the British navy. In August 1808 nearly nine thousand soldiers boarded Royal Navy ships and returned to fight in the Peninsula. Back in Spain he harried the French with swift blows; Wellington, on learning of his death, said it was the greatest loss the cause could suffer. The Trafalgar district, where the street opens, grew out of the Ensanche that Carlos María de Castro laid out around 1860.