Calle de Donoso Montesinos

Anyone walking today along Donoso Montesinos treads what was once the colonia de los Cármenes, a cluster of low houses built between 1926 and 1928, when this still belonged to Chamartín de la Rosa, a municipality that Madrid did not absorb until 1948. That development gave its streets the names of plants and of people: Ciprés, Lilas, Saxífraga, and among them this compound surname that still holds out, surrounded by much taller blocks. Of Donoso Montesinos no record has survived: no dates, no trade, no deed that would let anyone say who was being honored. He should not be confused with Juan Donoso Cortés, the nineteenth-century thinker from Extremadura, who has his own street in another district. What does remain are some of the colony’s original little houses, still standing along the street.