Calle de Espoz y Mina

Espoz y Mina was not born with that name. The Navarrese Espoz Ilundáin enlisted as a guerrilla in the band led by his nephew, Francisco Xavier Mina, during the war against the French. When the imperial troops captured the young man, the uncle took over the command and the surname too: from then on he signed as Espoz y Mina. Under his baton the Navarrese guerrillas stopped acting on their own and became a single army that humbled Napoleon’s troops more than once. The street was born of the pick. The disentailment of 1836 brought down the convent of La Victoria, and that freed site served to widen the Carrera de San Jerónimo and lay out new streets. One of them is this, which until then had been barely a stretch of the narrow calle de Majaderitos.