Calle del Escaramujo

The name comes from the countryside. The escaramujo is the wild rose, the Rosa canina that grows unruly in hedges and ditches, with white or pink five-petaled flowers and stems full of thorns. Its fruit is also called escaramujo, that elongated orange-red berry that ripens in autumn and for centuries served as a household remedy. This street belongs to a neighborhood woven from plants. In Valdeacederas streets line up with the names of flowers and shrubs —⁠Azucenas, Margaritas, Magnolia, Cantueso⁠—⁠, almost all added to the map in the mid-20th century, when Madrid absorbed Chamartín de la Rosa and the tangle of repeated names had to be sorted out. Whoever walks this street today treads a name that evokes the hedge of a country lane: the thorny shrub that in June flowers white and in November covers itself with red fruit.