Nudo de Manoteras

The name describes what the road is: the great interchange that knits together the north of Madrid, where the A-1 crosses the M-30 and the M-11. A traffic knot, in the literal sense of the word, turned into an urban place-name. Manoteras, the site that lends the interchange its surname, sinks its roots far earlier than the asphalt. The place-name is said to come from a Latin form related to the high ridges, the gentle rises that once dominated this stretch between Fuencarral, Hortaleza, and Chamartín. It was high ground, visible from the city, and that relief left its echo in the name. Where there once were hollows hidden among hills and dirt tracks, from the 1950s on rose the settlements that housed families arriving from the countryside, and later the tangle of viaducts that now orders the traffic heading north.