Calle Garganta de los Montes
Takes its name from the mountain village of Garganta de los Montes, in northern Madrid, whose place name describes the narrowing of the land between peaks.
Garganta de los Montes is a village in the upper Lozoya valley, in Madrid’s northern sierra, and the street brings it into the city like so many Arganzuela streets that carry the names of Madrid towns.
A garganta, in mountain speech, is the narrows where a river or a road forces its way between the slopes, the tight gorge that squeezes the landscape before letting it go. That is what the place name describes: a settlement wedged between hills, at the mouth of the valley. The village took shape in the late Middle Ages, when Christian resettlement brought shepherds to these sierra lands.
The sign now reads in the middle of Atocha, over city asphalt, some seventy-five kilometers from the valley that named it.