Puerto de la Fuenfría
Comunidad de Madrid
Transparent two-member compound. Fuenfría, Romance contraction of fuente fría ('cold spring'), designates the icy spring that emerges at the col at 1,796 metres, headwater of the Guadarrama river. The syncopated agglutinated form is characteristic of medieval Castilian; it coexists with the full form Fuente Fría in parallel toponyms of the Central System. The noun puerto, from the Latin portus ('mountain pass, gorge'), extends metaphorically to high mountains the original maritime sense of the term.
Evolution of the name
- portus / fons frigida Latin 1st centuries BC–4th
- Fuent Fría / Fuenfría medieval Castilian from the 12th century
Reflections, to the letter
The name is no metaphor. At the pass, 1,796 metres up, water rises that stays icy in high summer; Madoz already recorded here 'a spring of very good quality and excessively cold water.' From these sources the headwaters of the Guadarrama run down, born cold. Drinking from the spring, the chill biting your teeth in August, you grasp in one mouthful why those who crossed before you called the place Fuenfría, the cold spring.
Glossary
- Agglutination
- A process by which two or more separate words merge into a single one over time. Molina seca → Molinaseca, Pontem veteram → Pontevedra.
- Antonine Itinerary
- Roman administrative register of the roads of the Empire, drafted under the reign of Emperor Caracalla (211–217) on earlier sources. It documents more than 225 routes with their distances in Roman miles and the passage stations (mansiones, mutationes). Road XXIV of the Itinerary, between Emerita Augusta and Caesaraugusta, connects through the Fuenfría pass the two great provincial capitals of the central peninsula and maintains stretches in continued use two millennia later.
- Roman road
- A stone-paved Roman highway, part of the imperial communications network (Via Aquitana, Via Augusta, Iter ab Asturica); many such roads became medieval routes and, later, stretches of the Camino de Santiago.
Sources
- Sánchez Albornoz, C. — Tres viajes a la Sierra de Madrid
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Camino de Madrid