Calle de Alberdi

The sign brings a surname and little more. Alberdi is Basque, with a place-name root: in Euskera it names ground grown with alders, those riverside trees that thrive beside water, and from there it came to name farmsteads and families. That the street honours a particular person of that surname seems most likely, but no record survives of who they were or why they earned a street in this corner of northern Madrid. The name was left unexplained when the old district of Chamartín de la Rosa was absorbed into the capital. The street did leave a story of its own. For years, where it meets the paseo de la Dirección, a century-old mulberry grew that residents took up as a banner against the wrecking crews. They called it the mulberry of Alberdi. It withstood meetings, banners and promises until it was felled, and its missing trunk is still named in the neighbourhood as a symbol of a lost fight.