Calle José Martínez de Velasco

José Martínez de Velasco y Escolar, born in Madrid in 1875, was a lawyer and counsel to the Council of State before entering politics. A deputy, a senator and, under the Second Republic, the founder and leader of the Agrarian Party, a right-wing group that gathered conservative and rural interests under the motto “Religion, family and property”. Between 1934 and 1935 he held several portfolios, up to Minister of State, then the equivalent of head of foreign affairs. When the Civil War broke out he was imprisoned in the Cárcel Modelo and there, in August 1936, he was killed in one of the prison massacres. The street belongs to the old Colonia del Hogar del Empleado, built in the fifties to house workers of the National Mint, a neighbourhood created to ease the post-war housing shortage.