Calle del Conde de Cartagena

Conde de Cartagena ties this Niño Jesús neighborhood, built up between the 1940s and 1960s, to a soldier who crossed an ocean to fight those seeking independence from Spain. The name recalls the title Ferdinand VII granted to Pablo Morillo in 1819, in reward for the capture of Cartagena de Indias, then in the hands of the New Granadan independence fighters. Before that, Morillo had built a career that began as a volunteer: aboard the San Ildefonso he fought at Trafalgar, was wounded and taken prisoner, then fought at Bailén and at Puentesampayo, a day that won him the nickname “the Lion of Sampayo.” In February 1815 he sailed from Cádiz at the head of fifty-nine ships and more than ten thousand men bound for America. The siege of Cartagena de Indias dragged on until December of that year and cost some six thousand civilian lives to hunger and disease. Back in Spain he backed the cause of Isabella II during the First Carlist War, and rests in Madrid’s San Isidro cemetery. Before the street existed, these grounds southeast of the Parque del Retiro had tempted others: in 1925, the company “Los Previsores de la Construcción” planned to develop them, but the scheme was never carried out.