Calle del Conde de Peñalver

Walk down the calle del Conde de Peñalver from north to south, from Alcalá to Francisco Silvela, and you cross the Goya and Lista neighbourhoods. The street had another name until 1941: calle de Torrijos, after the liberal general José María de Torrijos, whom Ferdinand VII had shot. The Francoist council erased that memory and put in its place the last great conservative mayor of the Restoration. Nicolás de Peñalver y Zamora (Havana, 1853 – Madrid, 1916), from a family enriched by sugar estates, held the office of mayor of Madrid three times. During his third term he set the Gran Vía project in motion, with works beginning in April 1910, and founded the Municipal Band of Madrid. The count’s name travelled across the map before landing here. Between 1910 and 1936, the first stretch of the Gran Vía was called avenida del Conde de Peñalver. When that stretch regained its old name after the war, the mayor’s surname moved to the former Torrijos, where it remains.