Calle de Alustante

To name the streets of Prosperidad, the plans reached for the map of Guadalajara, and from it came Alustante, a village lost among peaks of seventeen hundred metres, in the old Lordship of Molina, near the line that once divided Castile from Aragon. The place-name appears in documents at the end of the 13th century, mentioned in the will of Countess Blanca Alfonso, lady of Molina. Where the word comes from exactly, no reliable record survives. What is known is the life of the place. It was a land of wool and mules, with shepherds who drove their flocks down in winter to the mild pastures of Andalusia and craftsmen who carved slate pencils. Its parish church, Gothic from the first third of the 16th century, was built by a crew of Basque stonemasons. The village boasts a motto that sums up its character in the face of emigration: “Alustante, few are enough”.