Plaza de Manuel Becerra

Before there was a square here there was open country. Where five streets now cross, on the Aragón road, there stood a few inns and a fielato, the tollbooth where the city taxed whatever came through its gates. The transformation came from the plan Carlos María de Castro drew up in 1860 to expand Madrid. Around 1900 the spot took the shape of a roundabout when five roads converged: Alcalá entering on the diagonal, Francisco Silvela from the north, Doctor Esquerdo from the south, Ramón de la Cruz from the west and Doctor Gómez Ulla from the northeast. Four neighbourhoods meet at this point. The name honours Manuel Becerra, a member of the Constituent Cortes of 1869 and holder of several ministries. As minister of Overseas Territories, he brought proposals to Congress to abolish slavery in Puerto Rico; the slaveholding lobby sank them. The square carried another name for nearly two decades: between 1961 and 1980 it appeared as Plaza de Roma. Becerra’s name returned in 1980, when the city began undoing the street map inherited from Francoism.