Calle de Martínez Izquierdo

On Palm Sunday, 18 April 1886, on the steps of the Colegiata de San Isidro, a priest drew a pistol and fired three times at the man who gives this Calle de Martínez Izquierdo its name. The victim was Narciso Martínez Izquierdo, first bishop of Madrid-Alcalá. He died the next day. He was born in 1830 in a village in Guadalajara, was ordained a priest in 1857 and served as bishop of Salamanca before Leo XIII placed him at the head of the newly created Madrid-Alcalá diocese, of which he was the first holder. His killer, Cayetano Galeote Cotilla, was a priest the bishop himself had removed from his chaplaincy during a disciplinary reform. He was declared insane and confined to the Leganés asylum, where he died more than three decades later. The street opened soon after that shot: an 1889 Madrid directory already describes it as recently opened, so the plaque must have been placed between 1886 and 1888.