Calle de Rodríguez Jaén

The name is a surname, Rodríguez Jaén, and there ends what can be stated with certainty. Who the man was and why a street in the Castilla district remembers him is not documented. Rodríguez Jaén belongs to the ground of the old Chamartín de la Rosa, an independent municipality north of Madrid until the capital absorbed it in 1948. That town grew from housing estates of low buildings, and a few of them still survive on this very street, holding out against the advancing towers. The surname must have needed no explanation when it was posted, and time has left it mute. Today the street runs out into the orbit of Chamartín station, among warehouses and offices. Anyone looking for a plaque or a bust of the honoured man will find nothing: only the surname on a blue background and a row of old houses that recall the town this was before it became Madrid.