Calle del General Zabala

Juan de Zavala y de la Puente was born in Lima in 1804, when Peru was still a viceroyalty, into a family of royalist nobility. He came to Spain and made his career in arms: he fought in the First Carlist War on the Isabelline side, under Espartero. His fame came with the African War. Leading the Second Army Corps, he won at the Sierra Bullones, and General O’Donnell granted him the marquisate of Sierra Bullones for it; the campaign also earned him the Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand. By his own right and by marriage he gathered a dukedom, four marquisates, and five countships. In politics he was minister of war and, in 1874, president of the Council of Ministers, in the months preceding the Bourbon Restoration. He died in Madrid in 1879. The Calle del General Zabala runs through the Ciudad Jardín neighborhood.