Your family tree is on every street

Madrid, like most large modern metropolises, has been expanding by annexing population centers bordering. Each of these annexed towns has its own history and, some of them, leave curiosities such as that their streets are witnesses of the family tree of the family that owns the land on which an entire district would be built that in 2023 was home to some 143,000 inhabitants.

The Usera district, located south of Madrid, is known today for its multicultural atmosphere, especially for the celebration of Chinese New Year organized by the Chinese community resident in the area.

However, not many people have noticed a peculiarity in the names of their streets. A surname is repeated insistently in his street map: Usera. The reason is that, paraphrasing the writer and journalist Nieves ConcostrinaUsera, before being a neighborhood, was a gentleman. We can add that, in addition, he had a lot of family.

The story of a family with a zip code

In Usera’s street map we can find names like Nicolás Usera, Mariano Usera, Marina Usera, Luis Usera, Amparo Usera, Gabriel Usera and Isabelita Usera, all of them, as is more than evident, pointing out that the name Usera was not born by chance.

It all dates back to the end of the 19th century, when José del Río, known as “Uncle Sordillo”, a landowner from the south of Madrid, left some land north of Villaverde to his daughter, Carmen del Río Fernández. This rich heiress married Marcelo Usera in 1904, the son of a fallen bourgeois family who had not long ago returned from ill-fated Cuba.

Marcelo Usera had joined military service, like so many other young people of the time, where he continued in his military career until 1924 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the same time, the young Usera had already proven to be skilled in management, obtaining recognition with the livestock activities on the lands that his wife had inherited.

As a curious note and examples of how much Marcelo Usera was prospering with the management of his wife’s assets, the Royal Academy of History collect that Alfonso

A “Salamanca neighborhood” for the people

However, despite this livestock success, the lands located south of Madrid were not profitable enough to be dedicated to cultivation. Inspired by the Marquis of Salamanca and its urban project that gave rise to the stately neighborhood of Salamanca, Usera decided to dedicate those lands little given to cultivation as a starting point for a settlement for a new working-class neighborhood with houses affordable for workers.

Usera would take advantage of the facilities offered by the so-called “Cheap Houses Law” of 1911. Under this law, the landowner obtained tax exemptions and the transformation of rural land into developable land was facilitated, thus increasing the economic benefit due to the revaluation of the land. In this way, by promoting the construction of cheaper houses, he would not incur the economic problems that the Marquis of Salamanca’s project faced.

As stated the portal of Telemadridthe first colony that the rich landowner planned was called “Colonia Salud y Ahorro”, although it finally ended up being called “Colonia Moscardó”. The urban development of this first colony followed the guidelines of the workers’ colonies of the time. A main street crossed by small perpendicular streets.

A street map turned into a family tree

As a soldier, Usera began naming his streets with the names of illustrious soldiers, mainly belonging to the Legion that he had founded years before. Millán-Astray. However, he soon ran out of military names, so he began to draw on his own family tree and those close to him.

In this way, the Usera street map thus became a small family tribute: the main artery would be Marcelo Usera Street, which with its almost two kilometers serves as the backbone for the neighborhood, with which streets such as Mariano and Nicolás Usera, Marcelo’s brothers, intersect.

Usera dedicated a square to his wife Carmen del Río. Deserved recognition for the heiress who owned the land on which it stood the new neighborhood. Amparo Usera, goddaughter of Carmen and Marcelo, has a street symbolically located parallel to that of her rich godfather and bordering her godmother’s square.

As the content creator highlights selpide in the profile on TikTok from Madrid Secreto, Marcelo was not satisfied with honoring first-degree relatives. Numerous nephews of the landowner and urban planner such as Antonia, Gabriel, Luis, Marina or Isabelita Usera are also now street names. Even Marcelo’s maternal grandmother, Isidra Jiménez, and his sister-in-law, Marina Vega, appear in Usera’s street map.

Once the names of the Usera clan had been exhausted, the honors began to be extended to friends of the family, such as Carmen Bruguera, José Anespere and Pablo Ortiz, and even to employees, such as Felipe Díaz who, according to what was published by Infouserawas the administrator who designed the layout of the streets and whose house is preserved there. His daughter, Perpetua Díaz, also has a street in the neighborhood.

In addition to honoring his family and friends with street names as if they were little cards, Marcelo Usera also wanted to honor those who were directly involved in the success of the urban project.

Among those names, Gumersinda Rosillo and Jesús Montoya stand out, two of the first inhabitants of the new neighborhood. In your videoSélpide also highlighted the name of Máximo Carazo, Usera’s first pharmacist, who provided clean water from his well to the inhabitants of the new neighborhood.

Since its urbanization, this corner of the south of Madrid has been characterized by peculiarity of their street namess, who remember on every corner that being born into the right family can make a name continue to be remembered decades later, even if its only merit is having the right surname in the right neighborhood.

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Image | Royal Academy of History