Calle de Santiago Cordero
Points to Santiago Alonso Cordero, the Maragato muleteer who amassed a great fortune in nineteenth-century Madrid and built the Casa Cordero on the Puerta del Sol, though the street’s official dedication is not on record.
The name refers to a person, but the municipal street records left no reason in writing. The best-known Santiago Cordero in Madrid’s memory is Santiago Alonso Cordero (1793-1865), a Maragato muleteer born in Santiago Millas, in León, who came to Madrid in the transport trade and ended up running stagecoach lines across half of Spain.
His fortune came from that and from speculating in urban land. As a councillor, he bought the plots of the Puerta del Sol at auction and built there the Casa Cordero, still standing at the start of Calle Mayor. A version circulated that a lottery win had made him rich, but his name does not appear among the winners. Despite his money he went on wearing the traditional Maragato dress, which is why they nicknamed him “the Maragato Cordero”. He died of cholera in the middle of the epidemic.
That this Valdeacederas street bears his name fits the custom of honouring the city’s popular figures, though no surviving document confirms it. Here, pending the papers, the owner of the Casa Cordero remains the most likely candidate.