Taxdirt?

My sister is a tax attorney, so when I saw this street sign in Barcelona I had to take a picture and send it to her. (Carrer is Catalan for ‘street’; its Spanish cognate is calle.)

"Taxdirt Street" in Barcelona.

“Taxdirt Street” in Barcelona.

I couldn’t find taxdirt in wordreference.com, my go-to Spanish dictionary; nor did I expect to, since it doesn’t sound at all Spanish. My next step was to ask a friendly server at a gelato shop we stopped at later that afternoon on the Ramblas. It turned out that he lived around the corner from Carrer de Taxdirt — but had no idea what it meant.

Fortunately, Google and Wikipedia soon came to the rescue. It turns out that Taxdirt is the name of a famous 1909 cavalry charge in Morocco, near Melilla (with Ceuta, one of two Spanish cities in Morocco). It has inspired a monument in Melilla, a set of toy solders (or perhaps ‘military figurines’), and even a hymn. Lyrics here.

 

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