Calle del Matadero

The name says what once stood here: the municipal slaughterhouse of Tetuán de las Victorias, where the meat was cut that fed a working-class quarter growing fast north of Madrid. Calle del Matadero served that neighborhood in the early decades of the twentieth century. Tetuán de las Victorias itself owes its name to the African war. In 1860, the troops returning in victory camped briefly on open ground north of the city before their triumphal entry into Madrid. The camp lasted a few hours, but the echo of the victory stuck to the area. Today a short stretch remains, barely one hundred and forty meters in Valdeacederas. Nothing of the slaughterhouse can be seen; the name is the only witness that carts once passed this way on their route to the butchering.