Calle de Ángel de Diego Roldán

The street’s name points to a person, Ángel de Diego Roldán, but who this man was has been lost. No date, trade or feat has survived to explain why Madrid set aside a street for him. The name is simply not documented. The surprise lies in the neighbourhood. Ángel de Diego Roldán runs through Hispanoamérica, in Chamartín, an urban grid laid out in the mid-20th century where almost every plaque names a nation or a city on the other side of the Atlantic. Around it follow Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua, Bolivia, plaza de Lima, plaza del Perú. Amid so much American map, a person’s name feels out of place. Its scarcely three hundred and seventy metres run between façades whose neighbours across the way evoke capitals and republics, while this street keeps a particular individual whose memory has not reached us.