Calle de Carmen Montoya

In the Almenara neighbourhood, within the Tetuán district, a short residential street holds the name of a woman about whom nothing survives. Carmen Montoya gives the street its name, but no record explains who she was or why Madrid remembered her here. Almenara grew as a working-class area during Madrid’s expansion northward, when Tetuán de las Victorias was ceasing to be an outlying district and joining the city. Many of its streets took the names of people connected to the place, which the street map kept without leaving any documentary trace. She may have been an owner, a neighbour, or a relative of whoever developed the plot, but none of that is confirmed. Whoever reads the sign today finds only a name.