Calle Rodríguez Villarejo

Barely seventy meters in the heart of Legazpi carry this name, and no one has left a written record of whom it belonged to. The sign of Calle Rodríguez Villarejo keeps a compound surname of the kind that in Madrid usually points to a specific person, almost always someone with weight in neighborhood life or tied to the land that was developed. Here that identity is undocumented. The silence suits the place’s origin. Legazpi grew south of old Madrid, beside the Manzanares and the municipal slaughterhouse, on the old Arganzuela pasture that for centuries was grazing land before it was city. Many of its lesser streets were named as the grid filled with warehouses, workshops and workers' housing, and quite a few dedications were left without explanation. Whoever reads the sign will pronounce two full surnames and still not know whom it names.