Calle Alejandro Dumas

Before the industrial warehouses, there were only orchards here and a settlement of poor houses, lived in largely by Roma families. It was called Las Cambroneras after the boxthorn, the spiny shrub that spread across this wasteland by the river, a place that to a Madrileño from the centre felt as remote as China. When the district changed, the street took the name of the French novelist. There is no record of which of the two Dumas the street honours. The father, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. The son (1824-1895) triumphed in the theatre with The Lady of the Camellias, which Verdi turned into La Traviata. The name landed near the Manzanares, a river the elder Dumas had scorned on his visit of 1846: he handed a water seller back half a glass of water to pour into the river, because the Manzanares needed it more than he did.