Calle del Cenicero

The origin of Calle de Cenicero is disputed between two layers that have never quite prevailed one over the other. The official version, fixed around 1840, looks north and honours Cenicero, a town in La Rioja. It is the convenient explanation to put on a plaque. But several chroniclers dismantle it with a more down-to-earth, Madrilenian story: the street was already called this before, after the yards where ash (ceniza) from the Villanueva bread ovens was collected. That ash was not thrown away: it was sold to laundries, which used it as lye to whiten clothes. Other voices point to different ashes, those left by shepherds breaking their winter camp or from charcoal-burning of the holm oaks. Neither explanation has managed to drive out the other, and so both still share the same plaque.