Calle Marqués de Torroja
The street recalls Eduardo Torroja Miret, a civil engineer and pioneer of concrete construction, granted the Marquisate of Torroja posthumously in 1961.
Behind the noble title is an engineer. Eduardo Torroja Miret, born in Madrid in 1899, took reinforced concrete to limits few had imagined. He roofed the Zarzuela racecourse with a canopy that seems to float without supports and covered the Algeciras market with a wafer-thin dome. His viaducts and vaults are still studied as feats of calculation.
The Marquisate of Torroja was created in October 1961, a few months after his death, granted posthumously. Calle Marqués de Torroja inherits that title, not the bare surname, hence the style of marquis. The location is no accident either: Torroja headed the construction research institute that now bears his name, housed in the Costillares complex, among the pine woods of Chamartín.
The title lives on. It passed to his son, also an engineer, and later to the singer Ana Torroja, granddaughter of the first marquis.