Plaza del Conde de Casal

Plaza del Conde de Casal was born of a crossing. Where the old Paseo de Ronda meets the Avenida del Mediterráneo —⁠laid over the old Vallecas road⁠—⁠, the corner opened a space that had had no shape of its own. The avenue turned it into a hub: here Pacífico, Adelfas, Estrella and Niño Jesús converge, four neighborhoods of the Retiro district. The name commemorates Manuel Escrivá de Romaní y de la Quintana (Madrid, 1871–1954), tenth Count of Casal and first Marquis of Alginet. He was a senator for Toledo, sat on the National Consultative Assembly during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and, after the Civil War, was named first deputy mayor of Madrid between 1946 and 1949 by the Franco regime. Alongside politics he pursued a passion that left books behind: a fine-arts academician, he published studies on Spanish ceramics. The naming came almost immediately after his death. The Council set the name on 29 September 1954, barely twenty-six days after he died. The speed fits a custom of the early Franco years, which tended to honor its collaborators with a street as soon as they were buried.