Calle Camporreal

The sign gathers, in a single word, the name of a town in the Region of Madrid: Campo Real, set on a hill some thirty-five kilometers from the capital, in the Las Vegas region. Its church of Nuestra Señora del Castillo, Renaissance in design with a Herrerian air, crowns the town from above. The form of the name has centuries of sediment. The place was first called Aldea del Campo and, under Andalusi rule, Campo de Almoacid. The present name was fixed in 1580, when Philip II granted the town the title of villa. The street belongs to a corner of Berruguete where the street map filled with towns of the province, a habit that turned the neighborhood’s plan into a small geography of Madrid. Berruguete is one of the smallest neighborhoods in the district, squeezed between Bravo Murillo, Francos Rodríguez, Ofelia Nieto and the Paseo de la Dirección, on land that a century ago was orchards and tollhouses at the gates of Madrid.