Calle de Nielfa

In the web of short streets that stitch El Viso to the Castilla district, in Chamartín, this one barely reaches seventy metres and holds a name that has resisted every explanation. Nielfa is a Spanish surname, not a place name or a trade, and the street seems to remember a person. The municipal register never said which one. The surname is unusual and thinly spread across Spain, its origin not known for certain; the heraldic claims that circulate about it rest on no reliable documentation. Who the Nielfa deserving a street was is not documented either, and there is no famous figure of that name linked to the district. The visitor who pauses before the plaque comes away with a bare surname and a silence, the silence of so many small Madrid streets named for reasons the paperwork never recorded.