Calle Ruiz Ocaña
The street bears the compound surname Ruiz Ocaña, probably that of an owner or land developer in the Madrid of the outlying Ensanche. It lies in La Guindalera, a neighbourhood developed through private subdivisions between 1860 and 1930, where it was common to name streets after the original owner of the plot.
Some signs hold a name and, with it, almost nothing more. Calle Ruiz Ocaña is one of those pocket enigmas that the Guindalera neighbourhood has carried since its birth.
La Guindalera began to be developed in the 1860s, on orchards spread east of Castro’s Ensanche, almost all through private initiative: the owners parcelled out their estates, ceded the streets to the municipality, and the council merely made official the name the residents already used, nearly always the owner’s surname. The compound surname of Calle Ruiz Ocaña ought to fit that pattern, but there is no way to pin it down: neither the chroniclers nor the municipal register explain who he was.
The most likely answer is far humbler: a local owner of the late 19th or early 20th century who ceded his land, gave the street his surname and vanished from the archives. His name is still there, read every day by whoever passes, and no one now knows to whom it belonged.