Calle José Miguel Gordoa

Born in 1777 in what is now the Mexican state of Zacatecas, José Miguel Gordoa y Barrios earned a doctorate in Theology and taught Sacred Scripture at the seminary of Guadalajara, in what was then New Galicia. His province elected him deputy; he crossed the Atlantic and joined the Cortes of Cádiz in 1811, when a Spain occupied by Napoleon’s troops was debating its first Constitution. In August 1813 he was named president of that assembly, and in September he presided over the session that closed the constituent body. The closing speech fell to him, in which he urged the deputies to preserve the newly approved Constitution. He was the last American to lead that assembly. He later returned to Mexico, where he was made bishop of Guadalajara, and died in 1832. Here, on this short stretch of La Chopera, a framer of the constitution born on the far side of the ocean is written into Madrid’s street map.