Calle de Narváez
The street honours Ramón María Narváez y Campos (Loja, 1799 – Madrid, 1868), 1st Duke of Valencia and seven times President of the Council of Ministers under Isabella II. He was the moderate politician with the greatest continuity in government during her reign. The street belongs to the Castro extension, developed from 1871, in the Ibiza neighbourhood.
Calle de Narváez runs in a straight line from north to south through the Ibiza neighbourhood, in the Retiro district, hugging the eastern flank of the Retiro and separated from the park by a row of façades. Its layout was born with the extension that Carlos María de Castro designed for Madrid, approved in 1860 and built from 1871, when those new streets filled with the names of soldiers and politicians of the Isabelline period.
The name recalls Ramón María Narváez y Campos, born in Loja in 1799. They called him “the Broadsword of Loja”, a nickname that came from the battlefields. In July 1843 his troops defeated Espartero’s army at Torrejón de Ardoz, a rout that brought down Espartero’s regency with it. Less than a year later he presided for the first time over the Council of Ministers; he would hold the post six more times, the last until the day of his death, in 1868. Isabella II made him Duke of Valencia with a Grandeeship of Spain.