Calle de O'Donnell

It owes its name to Leopoldo O’Donnell y Joris (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1809 – Biarritz, 1867), a general and politician who led the Vicalvarada (1854), founded the Liberal Union and was President of the Council of Ministers four times under Isabella II. It was created in 1868 over the line of the paseo de Ronda, laid out when the Wall of Philip IV was pulled down; it borders the Ibiza neighbourhood to the north and Goya to the south, between Alcalá and the approaches to the M-23 by Torrespaña.

This street was born from a demolition. In 1868, during the Glorious Revolution, the Wall of Philip IV fell, the old enclosure that marked the edge of Madrid. The council used its perimeter to lay out a ring boulevard and named each stretch after politicians and soldiers of Isabella II’s reign. The Calle de O’Donnell is one of those stretches, opened from scratch on ground that until then had been outskirts. Leopoldo O’Donnell y Joris came from a family of Irish origin settled in the Canaries. On 30 June 1854 he led the Vicálvaro uprising and soon afterwards founded the Liberal Union. His greatest burst of fame came at the head of the War of Africa: on 6 February 1860 he took Tetuan, a feat that earned him the title of 1st Duke of Tetuan. He died in Biarritz in 1867. The surname stayed in the memory of several generations of Madrileños for another reason. The O’Donnell Maternity Hospital opened on Christmas Eve of 1956 and, until it closed around 1999, recorded more than 300,000 births. Anyone reading the street sign today names, without knowing, the place where half the city was born.

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