Calle de Etreros

Behind the sign of the calle de Etreros is a village in the Segovian countryside, today a hamlet of the municipality of Sangarcía with barely a few dozen inhabitants. The name reached this corner of the Imperial neighborhood following a Madrid habit: naming streets after place names from nearby Castile. No documentary record survives of why Etreros in particular was chosen. The place holds a couple of oddities told with relish. It is the smallest town in Spain with its own bullfighting festivities, with running of the bulls and calf events in September. And in its chapel of the Santo Cristo de los Afligidos lay buried Julián Sánchez, El Charro, a famous guerrilla of the Peninsular War. In Madrid, the street is a brief stretch, less than a hundred meters, one of those small seams that stitch the map of Arganzuela together.