Plaza de los Astros
Takes its name from the stars overhead, within a neighbourhood named entirely after celestial themes.
Plaza de los Astros stands at the heart of the Estrella neighbourhood, a residential development in the northeast of Retiro. Its land, high and once given over to orchards and open ground, began to fill with apartment blocks in the 1950s.
Whoever laid out the streets chose a single thread for all of them: the night sky. Around this square run calle de la Estrella Polar, calle de Lira, calle de Perseo, calle de Sirio and calle del Pez Volador, along with the passages del Can Mayor and del Can Menor. “Los astros” is the word that embraces them all, the generic term for any glowing body in the sky. The square sits as the knot of that star map brought down to the ground.
Accounts of the neighbourhood’s own name disagree, ranging from the insurance company La Estrella to the Star of Bethlehem, in continuity with the neighbouring Niño Jesús area.