Calle de Fereluz

In Valdeacederas, north of Tetuán, several streets carry the names of flowers and plants: Genciana, Miosotis, Azucenas, Magnolia, Cantueso. Fereluz runs among them, and so it tends to be read as one more of the neighbourhood’s botanical set. Most of these names arrived in the mid-twentieth century, when Madrid absorbed Chamartín de la Rosa —⁠to which Tetuán belonged⁠— and the other outlying villages. The merger forced dozens of streets sharing names with the centre to be renamed, and a catalogue of flowers was used to settle the matter without dispute. Here is where certainty ends. “Fereluz” appears as a flower in no botanical index, nor is it documented as a surname, place or person tied to the neighbourhood. The name sounds botanical by company, not by record. It may well have come from a typo, from a garden flower now forgotten, or from a whim of the clerk who filled in the register that year.