Calle de la Sierra Bullones

A ridge of hills looks out over the Strait just behind Ceuta and traces the natural border with Morocco: the Sierra de Bullones. It rises in a run of peaks that classical tradition counted in sevens, hence the name Septem Fratres, the seven brothers, from which many derive the very place name of Ceuta. On 9 December 1859 those slopes saw the first major clash of the War of Africa: General Zavala drove back the troops of Muley el Abbas there, and from that place he took his title of Marquis of Sierra Bullones. That campaign explains why an entire Madrid neighbourhood is called Tetuán and why the surrounding streets were named like a map of the war. Whoever walks this street treads, without knowing it, an African sierra transplanted to the north of the capital.