Calle Marqués de Valdecilla

Behind this short street in El Viso is a man who left a Cantabrian village at fourteen and returned as one of the great fortunes in Spain. Ramón Pelayo de la Torriente was born in 1850 in Valdecilla and emigrated to Cuba in 1864, where he built his capital with the Rosario sugar mill, one of the most competitive on the island. The title that names the street was not his by birth. Alfonso XIII granted it in 1916, in recognition of an enormous philanthropy. From his own pocket came the Casa de Salud Valdecilla in Santander, now a university hospital, and a gift of one million pesetas to the Central University of Madrid, whose Valdecilla pavilion still bears his name. Around 1904 he paid for the American studies of the chess prodigy José Raúl Capablanca, hoping that one day he would run the sugar business. Capablanca chose the board and became world champion.