Calle General Velarde
The street is named after Clemente Velarde y González (Muriedas, Cantabria, c. 1827 – Madrid, 1886), an artillery brigadier and nephew of Pedro Velarde y Santiyán, the artilleryman killed at the Monteleón barracks on 2 May 1808. The name change was agreed on 13 April 1943, when the city council removed the duplication with the earlier name, Marina Española, which since 1866 had evoked the naval victories in the South American Pacific. Velarde died in Madrid during the failed republican uprising of General Villacampa, on the night of 19–20 September 1886.
On 21 May 1866 this street was given the name Marina Española, while the Pacífico district was growing fast. The streets around it together made up a naval set of names recalling the war against Peru and Chile of 1864–1866. The name lasted until a square next to the Senate took on that same designation; the overlap grated, and on 13 April 1943 the street took the name it holds today, in memory of Clemente Velarde y González.
Velarde had been born in Muriedas around 1827. His father was a brother of Pedro Velarde y Santiyán, the artillery captain who died defending the Monteleón barracks in the uprising of 2 May. That surname carried weight. Clemente followed a military career and gathered fronts: the Vicálvaro uprising of 1854, the African War, the second and third Carlist wars. He rose to brigadier.
He died in Madrid on the night of 19–20 September 1886, during the uprising of General Villacampa, the last military revolt attempted by republicanism in the Restoration years.
Its names
- Marina Española1866–1943