Avenida Centrum

The name comes from the Latin centrum, “center” or “middle point,” the same root behind the Spanish words for center and central. Why that term was picked for this street was never recorded, so any explanation is guesswork. The avenue runs through Cuatro Caminos, a district that took shape in the mid-19th century around a crossroads on the outskirts of Madrid, giving rise to a working-class suburb that consolidated over the last quarter of the century. On 17 October 1919 Alfonso XIII opened Madrid’s first metro line here, between Cuatro Caminos and Puerta del Sol. The sheds and workshops of that pioneering metro filled the neighborhood until they were demolished in 2021, and for decades they gave these blocks their railway character.