Glorieta de Cuatro Caminos
The name recalls the crossing of four old roads that met here when this was still open ground on the outskirts of Madrid.
Four routes crossed at this point when the place was nothing but open ground north of Madrid, with farmhouses and the odd factory lost among the fields. From that meeting the roundabout took its plain, exact name: here ran the old road to France (now Bravo Murillo), the Aceiteros road (now avenida de Reina Victoria), the paseo de Santa Engracia and the old paseo de la Ronda (now Raimundo Fernández Villaverde).
The name was slow to settle: it passed through plaza de Bravo Murillo, glorieta de Joaquín Ruiz and, under the Republic, glorieta del Catorce de Abril. The current name took hold in 1940, reviving the popular label that locals had long used.
The arrival of the metro in 1919 turned the old open ground into one of the gateways to the working-class Madrid of the north.