Calle de los Hermanos Ruiz

The name points to two people: brothers surnamed Ruiz. Who they were and why they came to be tied to this stretch of Adelfas has gone undocumented. The dedication survives on the plaque; the reason does not. The street sits at the heart of the old cluster that neighbours called Las Californias, a set of low houses between Pacífico and the Vallecas bridge, outside the lines of the Ensanche. Its neighbours bear the names of towns and plants —⁠Játiva, Seco, El Cafeto, Las Adelfas⁠—⁠, and among them Hermanos Ruiz introduces two human figures with no known biography. Anyone who walks its barely 162 metres today reads on the plaque some Ruiz brothers whose faces, trades and era remain unidentified.