Calle Marqués de Vallejo

Fuente del Berro

The street bears the noble title of Diego Fernández de Vallejo (Soto en Cameros, 1824 — Madrid, 1901), stockbroker, banker and lifetime senator on whom Isabella II bestowed the marquisate in 1864. In Carabanchel he founded Spain’s first centre specialising in epilepsy.

Diego Fernández de Vallejo was born in Soto en Cameros, a village in La Rioja, on 14 March 1824. He moved to Madrid and there built a fortune as a stockbroker and banker. Isabella II made him first Marquis of Vallejo in 1864, and he went on to serve as a member of parliament and a lifetime senator. He died of pneumonia on the last day of 1901, in his home on Calle Fuencarral. Behind the title lay a wound. His son José Manuel died in 1878 at the age of twenty-four from epilepsy, and the father turned his grief into a legacy. He handed an estate in Carabanchel Alto to the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God to build the San José Institute-Asylum, Spain’s first centre devoted to treating epilepsy. It was not his only gift: he also gave an estate in Valdemoro to the Civil Guard, which opened a school there for the orphaned daughters of the corps. Calle Marqués de Vallejo now recalls this man from La Rioja in the Fuente del Berro district.
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