Calle de San Fernando del Jarama

The name travels east of Madrid, to the town that for a century and a half was called San Fernando de Jarama and that in 1916 took the surname of Henares. That town was born of an industrial dream of the crown: in the mid-18th century a Royal Cloth Factory was built to weave fine wool, and around it grew workers' housing and services that eventually formed the municipality. The factory did not last long, but the settlement remained. The San Fernando of the title is not a place but a royal saint: Ferdinand III of Castile and León, conqueror of Córdoba, Jaén and Seville, canonised in 1671. The town took its name out of devotion to the medieval monarch. The fate of its geographic surname has its charm. In 1916 the council swapped Jarama for Henares, though the river that has truly accompanied the town, bordering it to the east, is the Jarama. The Madrid street keeps that old name, fixed on the map like an echo of the first one.