Plaza de Canalejas
Named after José Canalejas (1854–1912), prime minister and leader of the reformist liberalism of his time, assassinated in the Puerta del Sol in 1912. It was formerly called Plaza de las Cuatro Calles. The change came shortly after the murder.
A small square in the heart of Madrid’s financial district, where the Carrera de San Jerónimo meets the streets of la Cruz, Sevilla and del Príncipe. It is ringed by early-20th-century bank architecture, dominated by the former Banco Hispano Americano designed by Eduardo Adaro.
The name recalls José Canalejas, prime minister from 1910 and champion of a secular reformism that earned him a reputation as an enemy of the Church. On 12 November 1912 he stopped to look at the window of the San Martín bookshop in the nearby Puerta del Sol, and there the anarchist Manuel Pardiñas shot him dead. The city fixed his memory by renaming this crossroads, formerly the Plaza de las Cuatro Calles.
Its names
- Cruce sin denominación formalhasta h.1867
- Encrucijada de las Cuatro Callesh.1867–1912
- Plaza de Canalejas1912
Sources (7)
- Plaza de Canalejas — Wikipedia
- José Canalejas y Méndez — Wikipedia
- Plaza de Canalejas (Antes de las Cuatro Calles) — Flaneando por Madrid
- Canalejas: Historia de la Plaza de las Cuatro Calles — Veo Arte
- Algunos datos sobre la reforma urbana de la Plaza de Canalejas de Madrid en el siglo XIX — CyTET/FECYT (Carmen Giménez Serrano)
- Asesinato de José Canalejas — Wikipedia
- La plaza de Canalejas, el homenaje del pueblo a un político asesinado — Telemadrid