Calle Sánchez Balderas

A short street in the heart of Prosperidad bears the name of Sánchez Balderas, and no record of the man survives. Neither municipal registers nor neighborhood chronicles explain who he was or what he did to earn a plaque. Prosperidad grew in that same improvised way. From 1862, a suburb of vegetable gardens north of Madrid was parceled into tiny plots bought by bricklayers, carpenters and small owners. The streets that opened were usually named on the spot, after the first person to build a house there or the owner of the land. Sánchez Balderas fits that neighborhood custom: someone with enough land or roots to leave his name pinned to the map, though today no one knows which person it belongs to.