Calle Joaquín Montes Jovellar

Joaquín de Montes y Jovellar was born in Madrid in 1879 and became a lawyer before entering politics through Antonio Maura’s Conservative Party. He rose to Minister of Justice between 1930 and 1931, in the final bars of the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, and soon after helped found the Centro Constitucional, a monarchist grouping born on the eve of the Republic. When the Civil War broke out he was arrested for his monarchist and conservative profile, and was shot in Madrid in November 1936 alongside his son, during the repression of those first weeks. The name resurfaced much later. Around 2015 the city council weighed removing it while reviewing the street signs tied to Francoism, and a grandson rose in defence of his grandfather, recalling that he had been a victim of the war and not an officer of the regime. The plaque stayed in place, on one of the short, tree-lined streets of El Viso.