Calle de Sandoval

The name draws on the surname Sandoval, one of the noble houses that stood closest to power in Habsburg Spain. From that line came Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma, the royal favorite of Philip III who governed the kingdom for two decades. The line also produced cardinals, inquisitors, and royal chroniclers. Which particular Sandoval the city council meant to honor when it named this Trafalgar street has gone undocumented; the reading of a 16th-century chronicler coexists with the simpler one, the surname on its own. The street runs barely a couple of hundred meters between San Bernardo and the Trafalgar area, a quiet stretch where the surname of the royal favorites was fixed on a blue plaque, far from the courtly splendor that once surrounded it.