Calle de Móstoles

The name Móstoles echoes through Spanish history because of what happened on 2 May 1808. As Madrid rose against Napoleon’s troops, two mayors of that town, Andrés Torrejón and Simón Hernández, signed a proclamation calling on Spaniards to take up arms against the French invader. That sheet of paper, written in a small town, passed from hand to hand and helped light the spark of the Peninsular War. Torrejón would die in 1812, worn down by the hunger the war left behind. The origin of the place name is unsettled. The oldest document to mention it, from 1144, calls it Turrem de Monsteles, “tower of Móstoles.” From there the theories branch out: an old monastery predating Islam, a pre-Roman root meaning “ox meadow,” or the Latin mustum olei, “oil must,” which would point to old Roman olive groves. None has won the argument. In the Hispanoamérica district, the street goes almost unnoticed beside the Alfonso XIII metro station.