Calle de Román Alonso

Some streets keep their secret. Román Alonso is one of them: a given name and a surname on the plaque, and little more. The street registry places it in Berruguete, but attaches no biography. No reliable record survives of who he was or of the reason the street was dedicated to him. Whoever looks for the figure is left without an answer. The district around it does have a clear history. Tetuán arose in the mid-nineteenth century, when the troops returning from the African war —⁠and from the 1860 victory in the Moroccan city of the same name⁠— camped by the old France road, today’s Bravo Murillo. From those suburbs grew Berruguete, named in honor of the Renaissance sculptor Alonso González de Berruguete. The name remains on the plaque; the man, if there was one, does not appear in the written memory of the city.