Calle de Ángel Hernández

The name points to a person, Ángel Hernández, but no record survives of who he was or why Madrid chose to remember him on this corner of Prosperidad. Neither the neighbourhood’s chronicles nor the municipal street register explain the tribute, so his biography remains blank. The street is short, barely one hundred and forty metres, at the northeastern edge of the neighbourhood. Further along it widens for cars and ends beside a nameless park, already pressed against the M-30, the ring road that here marks the boundary of the Chamartín district. The neighbourhood that holds it was born around 1862, when the investor Próspero Soynard bought farmland to divide and sell, and from his memory came the place-name Prosperidad. It was then a suburb of badly traced slopes and scattered houses along the road to Hortaleza. Neighbouring streets do preserve the memory of their dedications; that of Ángel Hernández keeps silent about its own, and whoever reads it aloud will pronounce a name of which the city left no trace but the plaque.