Calle de Santa María de la Alameda

This street belongs to a corner of Prosperidad where the street map works as a miniature of the mountains west of Madrid. Alongside Robledo de Chavela or San Martín de Valdeiglesias, the calle de Santa María de la Alameda brings to the urban pavement the name of a mountain village lost among pine woods and pastures, near the boundary with Segovia and Ávila. The place name joins two elements: the devotion to Santa María, which gave the place its name and patron, and the alameda, the grove of poplars that grows where water rises. Local tradition imagines a chapel dedicated to Santa María surrounded by trees, and hence the name of the hamlet that grew around it. The exact reason has not survived, and it has also been suggested that “Alameda” might come from the surname of an early settler. A branch of the Cañada Real Leonesa crossed those pastures, and the migrating flocks halted in the Cruz Verde area. Today the village, more than a thousand metres up, lies on the Madrid route of the Camino de Santiago.