Calle del Marqués de Villamejor

The street takes its name from the title held by Ignacio Figueroa y Mendieta (Llerena, 1808 – Madrid, 1899), an Extremaduran politician and businessman who became Marquess consort of Villamejor through his marriage to Ana Josefa de Torres y Romo, 6th titular Marchioness. He owned the land on which the street was opened; the city formalised the name in July 1901.

The marquess who gives this street its name was not born a marquess: he became one by marriage. Ignacio Figueroa y Mendieta was born in Llerena, in Badajoz, on 22 April 1808, and in 1852 he married Ana Josefa de Torres y Romo, 6th Marchioness of Villamejor. That union made him Marquess consort. The fortune Ignacio managed came from underground. His father had built a mining and metallurgical firm that extracted lead in Granada, Almería and the Linares district; Ignacio inherited the business and combined it with a long public life as deputy and senator until his death, aged ninety, in 1899. Lead paid for stone. In 1885 Figueroa bought a plot on the Paseo de la Castellana and built there a palace, completed in 1893, which the State acquired in 1914 and which housed the office of the Prime Minister until 1977. Today it holds the Ministry for Territorial Policy. The street was laid out over land belonging to the marquess himself, running between the Paseo de la Castellana and the calle de Serrano; the city made it official in July 1901.

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