Calle de las Navas
A name that evokes Las Navas de Tolosa, the great battle of 1212 against the Almohads, though no record survives of why it was chosen for this street.
A “nava” is a high, flat treeless plain, hemmed in by hills, where rainwater pools. The word is pre-Roman and dots the map of Castile in dozens of villages and places. From one of those navas, the ones that opened near Tolosa, in what is now the province of Jaén, the battle of 16 July 1212 took its name.
That day, the kings of Castile, Aragon and Navarre gathered their hosts in the Sierra Morena and broke the army of the Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nasir. The victory opened the Guadalquivir valley to the Christian kingdoms and remained one of the great days of the peninsular Middle Ages. It is said that a shepherd showed the troops a hidden pass through the range that let them take the enemy by surprise.
This Calle de las Navas, barely a hundred meters in Valdeacederas, catches that echo. The neighborhood grew in the late nineteenth century with a mix of names: plants, owners of the old farmland and the odd feat of arms. No record survives of why this particular street was so named.