Calle de Ordóñez

On the map of Almenara, this short stretch of little more than a hundred meters was labeled with a surname and no further explanation. Who the Ordóñez being honored was does not appear in the municipal records: the name is undocumented. The surname does have a clear root. Ordóñez is a patronymic: it means “son of Ordoño,” a first name very common among the kings of the northwestern peninsula in the early Middle Ages. Almenara grew up against the old core of La Ventilla, for decades a shantytown north of Madrid, and its lesser streets were named without the commemorative logic that ordered the main avenues of Tetuán de las Victorias. The plaque of Ordóñez thus preserves a thousand-year-old León surname whose Madrid recipient is unknown.