Calle del Bosque

Barely eighty metres of asphalt carry a name that tastes of undergrowth: Bosque. The word denotes ground thick with trees, and like so many Madrid streets christened with features of the landscape, it belongs to that family of names that describe the land rather than people. There is no documentary record of which grove it referred to or who decided the name, so it is best read as what it seems: a nature place-name, with no biography behind it. The coincidence, however, has its charm here. The old district of Chamartín de la Rosa kept a wood for centuries among its dry fields, its vegetable plots and its common pastures. By the mid-18th century that patch of trees had already declined into open scrubland, long before the Nueva España quarter arose after Chamartín’s annexation to Madrid in 1948. Today the street sits wedged between blocks east of the Castellana, without a single tree to justify its name. The wood is only on the sign.