Callejón de García Cea

A very short alley, with barely a handful of doorways, in one of the tiniest corners of Valdeacederas. Callejón de García Cea belongs to that grid of narrow streets born when the old shantytown of Tetuán de las Victorias swallowed up the market gardens and empty lots of northern Madrid. The surname fits the neighborhood’s custom, where much of the short streets took the names of the owners of the land being developed. Whoever gave up a plot to open a passage would usually ask, in exchange, to see their surname on the street map. With García Cea, however, the trail is lost: no reliable record survives of who he was or why the alley bears his name. Today the alley remains what it was: a modest shortcut, without continuous numbering beyond a few doorways, wedged among blocks a few steps from the Tetuán metro station.