Calle de Álvarez

The name points to a person and stops there: the surname Álvarez, with no first name, no trade, no portrait. No record survives of whom the street signs honoured with calle de Álvarez in the Almenara neighbourhood. Any general, politician or resident named Álvarez would fit just as well. The surname does have a history. Álvarez is a patronymic: it means “son of Álvaro”, a name of Germanic root that the Visigoths left on the peninsula and that spread in the Middle Ages. From that “son of Álvaro” came one of the most common surnames in Spain. Naming a street with it alone points to no one and to many at once. The street belongs to Almenara, the neighbourhood known for decades as La Ventilla, an outskirt of low houses grown on the margin of Madrid. A little over three hundred metres of asphalt that carry a surname and nothing more.