Calle del Factor

Los Austrias·Palacio

The street took its name from Fernán López del Campo (also recorded as Ocampo), Factor General to Philip II, whose house stood on this street in the second half of the sixteenth century. The office of factor was the royal treasury official in charge of managing contracts, collecting taxes, and making the king’s payments at the fairs and financial centres.

The memory of Madrid’s oldest wall climbs along Calle del Factor. The street runs down from Calle Mayor to Calle Rebeque, in the Palacio district, bridging the slope with stairways. Right there ran the line of the Islamic wall that Emir Muhammad I ordered built in the ninth century to protect the fortress of Mayrit. Earlier it was called de la Parra, and even de los Palominos on a 1549 map. The present name arrived with Fernán López del Campo, Philip II’s Factor General, who negotiated contracts with Flemish bankers and moved money at the fairs of Medina del Campo. His end was bitter: he died in 1592, imprisoned at Brihuega, under investigation by order of the very king he had served. The street bears, in essence, the name of a high official prosecuted by his own monarch. At number 1 stands the Palacio de Abrantes, whose library holds a five-metre stretch of that flint Arab wall.

Its names

  • Calle de los Palominosanterior a 1549
  • Calle de la Parrac. 16th century, antes de 1561
  • Calle del Factorsegunda mitad del 16th century – actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings