Calle Robledillo

Behind the sign is a tree. Robledillo is the diminutive of robledo, from the Latin roboretum, “oak wood”: a robledillo is, literally, a small oak grove, a hillside of young oaks. The place name recurs across the peninsula and also in the Madrid region, where it points to Robledillo de la Jara, a village in the Sierra Norte overlooking the Lozoya valley. Its coat of arms captures that landscape: an oak rooted in green surrounded by five rockrose flowers, the white shrub that carpets those fields in spring. For centuries it belonged to the Community of Villa y Tierra de Buitrago, and today it barely passes a hundred inhabitants. The street begins in the heart of Ríos Rosas, a quarter laid out in the late 19th century as Madrid began to spill beyond its old expansion towards the north. No firm record survives of why this mountain place name was chosen for an urban street in Chamberí.