Calle de Amalia

A woman’s name alone, with no surname or title, labels this short street in Castillejos. No municipal record keeps who that Amalia was. The blank fits the neighbourhood’s history. Castillejos grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century over old pasture land, with houses raised quickly by working people before any ordered plan arrived. In that Tetuán of improvised streets, the usual thing was to name the road after the woman who owned the land or built the first house. That is why the district gathers streets with women’s names: Andrea Puech recalls the owner of the first dwelling raised on it. Amalia may have been one of those residents or owners whose name stuck to the alley, but this is a hypothesis, not a fact. What remains is the plain plaque, five letters, and a name no longer remembered.