Calle de Pedro Medrano

A short street in Valdeacederas, barely a hundred meters, bears the name of a man who opened the most famous session in Argentine history. Pedro Medrano was born in 1769 across from Maldonado, in what is today Uruguay, and earned a doctorate in law at the University of Charcas before practicing as a lawyer in Buenos Aires. His moment came as a deputy to the Congress of Tucumán, of which he was the first president: it fell to him to deliver the opening address and lead the assembly that on 9 July 1816 proclaimed the independence of the United Provinces of the River Plate. The Valdeacederas street map preserves memory of American emancipation, and his plaque stands a few steps from the Paseo de la Castellana, in the Madrid once ruled by the crown against which he legislated.