Calle Miguel Arredondo

Calle de Miguel Arredondo is a short street in the Chopera neighborhood, in the strip of Arganzuela that drops toward the Manzanares. Its sign carries a proper name, which in Madrid almost always signals a tribute, yet no reliable record survives of this Miguel Arredondo: no trade, no date, no deed. To attach a figure to him without proof would be to invent a biography the street directory does not support. What is known is the landscape. Chopera grew from the old meadows of the Arganzuela pasture and filled with workers' housing to the rhythm of the railway, the factories and the slaughterhouse built in the early twentieth century. It owes its name to the poplars planted along its walks. Among modest blocks and long-standing shops, the street keeps its small mystery: a name the city still pronounces though it has forgotten whom it owes it to.