Calle de Valenzuela

The Jerónimos district was born in 1865 on the western strip of the Royal Site of the Buen Retiro, a section Isabella II split off from the crown and sold to the State. Between that year and 1870 the city council divided the area into blocks, and among the first streets opened were Juan de Mena, Ruiz de Alarcón, Felipe IV and Valenzuela, all dedicated to figures of the 17th- and 18th-century Court. Fernando de Valenzuela y Enciso was born in Naples in 1636. He began as a page to the Duke of Infantado and entered the household of the regent queen Mariana of Austria, a favor that earned him the nickname “the Palace Sprite.” His rise was dizzying: master of the horse, Marquis of Villasierra and, in December 1675, prime minister. The fall came just as fast. In January 1677 Juan José de Austria entered Madrid at the head of his troops and toppled him; exiled to the Philippines, he died in Mexico in 1692 from a horse’s kick. The Buen Retiro Palace had been the stage where the intrigues of his favor were spun. The street, laid out right over those grounds, returns that nearness to the map. No record survives of the municipal decision that fixed the name.