Travesía del Arroyo

The name describes the ground: an arroyo is a minor watercourse, and a travesía a short street that crosses to link two roads. Travesía del Arroyo names, plainly, the feature that marked this land before the flats. Old Tetuán de las Victorias, born as a working-class settlement from the second half of the nineteenth century, grew over open slopes north of Madrid. The Valdeacederas neighborhood takes its name from an old “val de acederas,” the valley where that sorrel grew wild, a place-name of soil and field older than the streets. No record survives of the exact reason for this travesía or which stream it referred to. The name belongs to that popular toponymy that urbanization slowly erased: first the channels vanished, then the houses went up, and in the end only the word remained. Today it is barely ninety meters, where the only current is that of the neighbors crossing it on their way to the Valdeacederas metro.