Calle de Ceferino Rodríguez

Ceferino Rodríguez has for decades labelled a short stretch of Valdeacederas, in the heart of Tetuán, and the exact reason for the dedication was not kept in the city’s records. A first name and two surnames this common leave the street with no biography attached. The candidate who left the deepest trace is Ceferino Rodríguez Alonso de Avecilla (1880-1956), a sports journalist who launched Madrid’s first football press and in 1904 chaired the capital’s pioneering association of clubs. After the Civil War, in which he sided with the Republic, he ended up exiled in Mexico. He has been called the most forgotten man in the history of Spanish football. But nothing ties the sign to this figure, and without a document the attribution remains a guess. The neighbourhood does keep its etymology: Valdeacederas comes from “val de acederas”, the valley of the sorrels, a pasture herb that grew across these old dehesa lands north of Madrid.