Calle de Robledo

A robledo is land covered with oaks, those hard-wooded trees that for centuries gave beams, charcoal, and acorns to the villages of the Madrid sierra. The word comes from the Latin roboretum, of the same root as robur, the strength of that wood, and passed also into dozens of place names across Spain, from lost hamlets to Robledo de Chavela. The street appeared in the working-class expansion of Valdeacederas, the district that grew down the slope from the old France road when Tetuán de las Victorias was still a suburb of low houses. There the developers named several streets after the countryside: Robledo runs parallel to Trébol and, without warning, changes its name to become Abadesa. No record survives that it refers to any particular oak grove or person; it fits into that batch of plant names with which the district was christened. Barely eighty meters carrying the memory of a wood that this corner of northern Madrid probably never had.