Without a doubt, the Condesa neighborhood, in the Cuauhtémoc City Hall, is one of the most attractive areas of Mexico City, due to its restaurants, bars, shops, tree-lined avenues, parks, and architecture.
However, Few know that its nomenclature comes from a wealthy New Spain aristocrat, María Magdalena Dávalos y Orosco, heiress to the title and ancestry of the Counts of Miravalle in the 18th century.
Enough is known about the countess thanks to a series of letters she exchanged with her son-in-law, Pedro Romero de Terreros, -also a wealthy nobleman of Spanish origin-, with whom she wrote between 1756 and 1766.
Life and work of the aristocrat who gave her name to the Condesa neighborhood
María Magdalena Dávalos y Orosco was born in Mexico City in 1701 and at the age of 18 she married Pedro Trebustos y Alvarado. That moment would mark the beginning of his history with the Condesa neighborhood.
And it is that, thanks to his marriage, he receives from his parents more than ten thousand pesos in personal property; as well as the usufruct of seven haciendas and ranches in northwestern Mexico; and a hacienda in Tacubaya, in what used to be the outskirts of Mexico City.
However, ten years later, her husband still young dies and years later, her father also dies; so the countess, with nine young children, has no choice but to learn how to manage her estates. to pay the debts acquired by her husband and her father; and also, to keep her family afloat.
In this way, over the years, Doña María Magdalena becomes a diligent administrator and as such, every week she visits her Tacubaya hacienda and invests in improvements to increase the value of her property.
An expanding farm
Likewise, he buys more land in Tacubaya to add it to the hacienda, until it reaches an approximate area of 160,000 square meters, covering what are currently the Condesa, Hipódromo Condesa and part of Roma Norte neighborhoods. At this juncture, the hacienda receives the name of La Condesa for the first time.
Finally, Doña María Magdalena died in 1777 and over the years, her children gradually sold their land, including the Hacienda de La Condesa, to later return to Spain.
From those distant times, today only the name of one of the favorite neighborhoods of Mexico City remains.