"On San Pedro Street, at the end of the street and in front of the church of the same name, there is a beautiful palace with a Renaissance structure, although it has been greatly transformed by various restorations, especially since the middle years of the last century.
The Palacio de los Toreno, or Palacio de los Condes de Mayorga, both members of the same family, is located a few meters from the former church, at the beginning of Calle de San Pedro, on the corner of Plaza del Trabuco and adjacent to the former Casa de la Cofradía de la Epifanía. In it resided Enrique de Trastámara (Seville, 1333 - Santo Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja, 1379), future Enrique II "el Fraticida", or "el de las Mercedes", during the visit that he made to Cuenca, city that was loyal to him, in the midst of the civil war waged in Castile between 1351 and 1369, in which he confronted his half-brother and legitimate king Pedro I "the Cruel", or "the Just", (Burgos, 1334 - Montiel, Ciudad Real, 1369). This conflict ended with the victory of Enrique in the Battle of Montiel, where the legitimate king, after being taken prisoner, was assassinated by his half-brother.
In this palace, it is said that Enrique de Trastámara had passionate love affairs with Catalina, a young lady from Cuenca, whom he fell in love with as soon as he saw her, and whom the chronicles portray as "moza fermosa, lozana e de buen parescer", as we can read in page 63 of the book "Calles de Cuenca", by José Luis Muñoz and José Luis Pinós. From these loves Gonzalo Enríquez would be born and with him the legend of the House of the Mermaid.
Once the Spanish Civil War was over, the Torenos abandoned the property and it was later passed to the hands of the writer César González Ruano (Madrid, 1903 - 1965) and, successively, to the painters Antonio Saura Atarés (Huesca, 1930 - Cuenca, 1998) and Gerardo Rueda Salaberry (Madrid, 1926 - 1996).
The Palacio de los Toreno, which currently consists of a ground floor and two upper floors, has three vertical axes of openings on its main façade, in which the main stone doorway, topped by a semicircular arch, and the line of balconies on the second floor stand out. These are framed between pilasters, ornamented with corbels at the height of the lintel of the windows, which extend to the molding that runs along this facade and on which triangular pediments sit on each of the three openings. The central one, split, is different from the others because it contains the coat of arms of the Enríquez family in its center."
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