Pasaje de Doña Carlota 8
Bears a woman’s name, a Carlota whose identity is undocumented, in the manner of the alleys that Prosperidad opened between plots from 1862 on.
No reliable record survives of which woman this alley honors. Who the Carlota who named it was is something the street map took down with no biography behind it.
Prosperidad was not born of a municipal plan but of the sale of dry farmland northeast of the expanding Madrid. From 1862 several owners began to parcel out those fields, and modest buyers raised their houses. Often the newly opened street took the name of a relative or of whoever had held the land.
That of Doña Carlota fits the mold: a woman’s name with no documented story, where the title “doña” points to some standing among her neighbors. Today it is a short alley in the very heart of Prosperidad, with its number 8 among the doorways that make it up.