Calle de María Juana

The calle de María Juana belongs to a scarce handful of Madrid streets —⁠fewer than forty across the whole city⁠— named after a woman with no accompanying surname. Almost all cluster in the old annexed villages and the informally laid-out districts, such as Tetuán or Carabanchel, where the street map grew on its own before municipal order arrived. Who this María Juana was has not survived. In such cases the name usually belonged to someone very recognizable to the neighbors: the owner of the rural land on which the streets were later opened, or one of the first settlers. Here the reason has been lost and only the name remains. The Berruguete district grew on the border between the emerging Tetuán de las Victorias and the municipality of Chamartín. Nearby stood the fielato, the booth where duty was charged on goods entering Madrid, and the two ceramic milkmaids that decorate an old building on Francos Rodríguez still survive. María Juana moves through that outlying landscape that was once field and orchard.