Calle Catalina Suárez

The name points to Catalina Suárez Marcayda, first wife of Hernán Cortés, though no municipal record explains why Madrid dedicated this street to her. The identification rests on the figure and on the colonial air of the area. Catalina crossed the Atlantic around 1509 and ended up in Cuba as a lady-in-waiting. There, in Santiago, she married around 1515 a Cortés still without glory, before he set off to conquer Mexico. What is memorable comes with her end. In 1522 she rejoined her husband in Coyoacán, and died there on November 1, the same night she had hosted a banquet. Cortés maintained it was a natural death; years later he was accused of strangling her. The suspicion was never resolved. Of that woman erased by her husband’s shadow there remains, in Catalina Suárez, a short stretch of Adelfas that very few know whom it recalls.