Calle General Cabrera

The general who names the street was Ramón Cabrera y Griñó, born in Tortosa in 1806. He was destined for the seminary, but he left the cassock when the First Carlist War broke out and joined the bands defending Don Carlos against Queen Isabella II. With no prior military training, he came to command the Maestrazgo, the region between the Ebro and the Júcar, where he earned the nickname “the Tiger”. One episode marked his course: in reprisal for his actions, liberal troops shot his mother in Tortosa. Cabrera answered with executions of hostages, and the war in the Maestrazgo reached a cruelty remembered for generations. That a Madrid street should honour this Carlist chieftain, an enemy of the liberal government of his day, is striking; the specific reason for the dedication in Cuatro Caminos is undocumented.