The houses and tower of the Lujanes, in the old Plaza de San Salvador, today known as Plaza de la Villa, are the main reference point for civil architecture in Madrid during the medieval period, as they are the only 15th-century palace-house that has survived in Madrid.
The houses of the Ocaña family
In the northern half of the site (approximately, number 2 in the square) at the beginning of that century, the old houses of the Ocaña lineage stood, with cellars and oven, bordering the houses of the heirs of Diego Díaz and the houses of Pedro de Vargas (whom we do not believe to be a member of any main branch of the Vargas family): their owner was Gonzalo García de Ocaña, chief accountant and chamber scribe to John II. In 1442, Gonzalo received from Pedro Briones, royal chamberlain, 187,664 maravedís to pay with them to Pedro de Luján, also the king’s chamberlain, ‘certain silver and certain doubloons of twenty-eight in doubloons each and other things of my chamber that are pawned by my order’. The years went by, and in the second half of 1449 Gonzalo died without having made the payment. As a result, on 20 January 1450, the Royal Council ordered the debt to be executed by seizing and publicly auctioning Gonzalo’s assets.
Blanca García, Gonzalo’s widow, then availed herself of the so-called ‘privilege of widows and orphans’, and asked the ordinary mayor of Madrid to hear the case; among other things, she argued that half of these houses were hers, as they had been acquired during her marriage to the accountant.
His request was unsuccessful and it was finally Juan Mosquera, royal bailiff and executing judge, who took charge of the process. The auction began on 25 February; Fernando, the council’s doorman, announced three times in the Plaza de San Salvador: ‘Who would like to buy some houses with their cellars and oven (…) belonging to Gonçalo Garçía de Ocaña, alderman who was in this town, which are in the collaçión of the church of Sant Saluador? Come here and sell them’. The proclamation was repeated over the following nine days, alternating the Plaza de San Salvador with the Plaza del Arrabal, today the Plaza Mayor (known as the ‘market square’ and ‘Plaza de la Puerta de Guadalajara’ in these documents), so that both the residents of the town and those of the suburb would be informed.
After an initial bid of 100,000 maravedís, two of Pedro de Luján’s men entered the auction: Juan Vázquez de Ávila, his procurator and steward, and Diego Hernández Maderuelo, a man who lived continuously with him, who raised the bid to 181,000 maravedís, the amount at which the auction was finally sold. Of these maravedís, the bailiff Mosquera set aside 18,100 for the alcabala and 7,900 for the rights of the notary and town crier, and left the remaining 155,000 for partial payment of the debt. Fernando García de Ocaña, Gonzalo’s first-born son, complained bitterly that they had been auctioned for less than half of what they were worth, and warned that they would be responsible ‘if there were any deaths or deaths of men or squires or evils or damages or any other inconsequential things’. On 23 March it was ordered that the 32,664 maravedís that were missing to complete the total amount of the debt, plus another 8,040 for costs, be executed on Gonzalo’s remaining assets, including various estates in Leganés, Butarque, Meaques de Arriba, Carabanchel de Suso and La Piqueña.
The Lujáns took effective possession of the houses on 27 April, represented by their procurator Juan Vázquez, who performed the protocol ceremony in cases of change of ownership: the bailiff took him by the hand ‘and put him inside the said houses; and then the said Juan Vasques said that with the will that he had to seize and win the said possession of the said houses and warehouses and oven, (. …) he entered the said houses, and drove out of them without force and without any violence whatsoever the persons who were there, and so, having driven them out, he closed and opened the doors of the said house. And thus the said Juan Vasques was left in the bodily tenancy and peaceful possession of the said houses and cellar and oven without any disturbance or contradiction from any person’. Blanca García, Gonzalo’s widow, and her children, moved to the colación de Santa María, although the exact location is not recorded.
The San Salvador estate
Thus, on 27 April 1450, the houses of the Ocaña family passed into the possession of the waiter Pedro de Luján, who from that moment onwards made them the main residence of the house of San Salvador of the Luján lineage, one of the most powerful in Madrid. Pedro, son of Miguel Jiménez de Luján, the one of the Rose, and Catalina Alfonso, was also lord of Palomero and Pozuela (today Pozuelo del Rey), alderman of the town council, and chief judge and fiscal apportioner of the Jewish communities of Castile. He married twice, the first time to Isabel de Aponte, daughter of Juan de Aponte, lord of Monreal, and the second time to Inés de Mendoza, daughter of Álvaro Dávila and Juana de Bracamonte, lords of Peñaranda and Fuentedelsol.

In 1449, a year before this seizure and auction, the maesterresala Juan de Luján, Pedro’s older brother, died; he had married twice, first to Leonor de la Cerda and then to Mayor de Mendoza, but neither of the two marriages produced any children. He lived in the family houses of San Andrés, built by his father Miguel Jiménez de Luján, and probably the first that this lineage had in the town; they were next to the church, and in time would become the palace of the Counts of Paredes and, nowadays, the Museum of Origins. When Juan died without succession, he left his inheritance of these houses in San Andrés to his nephew Juan de Luján, the Good, the first-born son of Pedro de Luján and Isabel de Aponte. We believe that Juan may well have moved into them at that time, as his father had not yet taken possession of those of San Salvador.

Thus, from 1450 onwards, with the Bueno already living in San Andrés, his father Pedro de Luján would begin the reform and extension of the new houses of San Salvador, which would include the construction of the famous strong tower; this may have been one of the first in the town, as the other emblematic one, that of Pedro de Castilla, with a passageway leading to San Andrés and ‘puerta leuadisa a su casa donde byue’, was not built until the 1490s. Seeing his death approaching, Pedro de Luján granted a will on 31 December 1472, founding a majorat by improvement of the third and fifth of his estate in favour of his first-born Juan de Luján, el Bueno, and linking these houses of San Salvador, which were still contiguous on one side to houses belonging to the heirs of Diego Díaz, but which now bordered on the other with houses belonging to the heirs of Mencía de Toledo, daughter of the royal accountant Alonso Álvarez, lord of the lineage of the Toledo family.
It is practically certain that Juan de Luján, el Bueno, both in the two decades between 1450 and 1472, and throughout the rest of his life, continued to live in his houses in San Andrés, as it is documented that he lived there when he died and that in 1518 his widow María de Luzón, daughter of Pedro de Luzón and María Palomeque, still lived there. Juan made his will on 21 December 1499, founding two entailed estates: one by improvement of the third of his estate in favour of his first-born son Pedro, which included the houses of San Salvador, and another by improvement of the fifth for his son Francisco, which included the houses of San Andrés. This will is particularly interesting, as its text confirms what has been said about the place of residence of Juan de Luján, el Bueno: ‘these our main houses in which we live in this town together with the church of San Andrés’, as well as informing us that in that last year of the 15th century the tower of the houses of San Salvador was already built and that the southern half of the plot (number 3 of the current square) already belonged to his father’s brother Álvaro de Luján, son of Pedro and his second wife, Inés de Mendoza: ‘his main houses that he (referring to his father Pedro de Luján) had in which he lived in this town with his tower and buildings that are in the collation of San Salvador, bordering the houses of Alvaro de Luxán, my brother, and the public streets’.

The coat of arms that identified the lineage after the marriage of Pedro de Luján to his first wife Isabel de Aponte can still be seen in the houses in the Plaza de la Villa, of the San Salvador entailed estate, as well as in the Renaissance courtyard of the Museum of Origins, the preserved remains of the original house of San Andrés: four quarters, with a girdle on the first and fourth and a piece of wall on the second and third, corresponding to the Luján lineage; and, all around, a border with fourteen castles, each one on three bridge arches, typical of the Aponte lineage.
DOCUMENTATION
– 1450: Seizure and auction of the houses and properties of Gonzalo García de Ocaña; his will of 11 April 1449 is included. General Archive of the Administration, box no. 8115.
– 1472, 31 December: Will of Pedro de Luján. AGA, sign. 8115.
– 1499, 21st December: Will of Juan de Luján, el Bueno. Royal Academy of History, M-62, fº106-110v.
(The transcription of these first three documents can be found in Luján Álvarez, Emilio, Luján. Historia de un Linaje Madrileño, Editorial La Rana, Madrid, 2011).
– 1518: Plan of the houses of Pedro Laso and María de Luzón in Madrid, next to the wall and Puerta de Moros. Archivo General de Simancas, MPD, 12,219.
This article is the English version of the article ‘Las casas de los Lujanes: Noticias sobre sus primeros ocupantes’ by the same author and also published in this blog. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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