Calle de Fernández Cancela

The name recalls José Fernández Cancela, a journalist and councillor of the municipality of Chamartín de la Rosa, the independent town that stretched north of Madrid before being absorbed by the capital. He was executed during the Civil War, and the street took his surname in 1949, by then within the Nueva España neighborhood. Until that date the street was called calle de Alfredo Cabanillas, in memory of a writer and journalist of the period. Little reliable trace of his life survives beyond his trade as a writer and his time on the Chamartín council. No detailed record remains of his career or of the exact circumstances of his death, so his figure endures mainly in the sign that bears his surname. The Nueva España neighborhood rose north of the old Chamartín de la Rosa, which ceased to be its own municipality in 1948 to join Madrid.