Calle Maudes

Before the hospital and before the district there was a village called Maudes, or Mahudes in its oldest form. It lay north of old Madrid, towards what is now Plaza de Cuzco, in the lands of the municipality of Chamartín de la Rosa, which was not absorbed into Madrid until the mid-20th century. Of that hamlet barely the name survives, fossilised in these streets. The most repeated etymology links it to the Arabic Mahmud, “praised”. The name became known when Antonio Palacios and Joaquín Otamendi raised the Day Labourers' Hospital here, opened in 1916 and known ever since as the Maudes Hospital after the place where it stood. Its granite towers, fortress-like, led many to believe the street was named after the building. It was the other way round: the building took its name from the old outlying hamlet.