Calle Bustillo del Oro

Behind this sign is a tiny village in the province of Zamora, today with barely a handful of residents among fields of grain. Calle Bustillo del Oro takes its name and transplants it to Tetuán, in a corner of Berruguete where several streets record towns of Castile and León. The place-name holds a memory of livestock. Bustillo is the diminutive of busto, a medieval word for the land set aside for grazing cattle, often cleared by burning the scrub. The Zamora village is documented in the 12th century, tied then to the jurisdiction of Toro, to which the “del Oro” that distinguishes it today has been linked; there is no record that it refers to real gold or to a river. On the hill of San Pelayo a Paleolithic hand-axe was found in 1963, proof that those lands were inhabited long before the name rose onto a Madrid plaque.