Calle Robregordo

In this corner of Prosperidad, where so many streets bear the names of villages in the region, Robregordo recalls a hamlet lost among the folds of Somosierra, almost on the border with Segovia, today one of the least populated municipalities in the Region of Madrid. The name almost reads itself. It joins robre —⁠the old form of “roble” (oak)⁠— with gordo, in the sense of thick: the place of the powerful-trunked oaks that once covered its lands. The village grew alongside the Royal Road that linked the two Castiles and crossed the pass of Somosierra, and lived off inns and taverns. When, in the nineteenth century, a new road traced its route a few steps from the old one, travelers stopped halting there and Robregordo fell silent. Its seventeenth-century church of Santa Catalina still watches over the empty street.