Plaza María Pignatelli

María Manuela Pignatelli de Aragón y Gonzaga was born on Christmas Day 1753 in Fuentes de Ebro, daughter of the Count of Fuentes. At sixteen she married the eleventh Duke of Villahermosa, and was widowed in 1790. She lived in the Palacio de Villahermosa, above the Paseo del Prado, the same building that now houses the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. The neoclassical façade the visitor admires was commissioned by her in 1805 from the architect Antonio López Aguado. From its windows she saw the uprising of 2 May 1808 break out. What she did next captures the woman. She left for Zaragoza, presented herself before General Palafox and paid out of her own pocket for companies of volunteers during the city’s two sieges. The war took its toll on her own family: her youngest son died of typhus in 1809 at nineteen. She is credited with the words “there lies our duty, let us hurry to Zaragoza.” She died in Madrid in 1816. The street bearing her name in the Guindalera is documented around 1903.