Avenida de Baviera
The name points to the German federal state whose capital is Munich. The avenue belongs to the Parque de las Avenidas development, promoted by CIOHSA from 1956 on former market gardens east of the Guindalera, with a street grid dominated by European place names beginning with B.
The Avenida de Baviera, at the eastern edge of the Guindalera, was born of a collective effort. In June 1956, the former pupils of Areneros —the Jesuits of the ICAI— set up a cooperative and handed the development to the property company CIOHSA. The first homes began to rise in 1958 on what until then had been market gardens.
The architects who laid out the streets gave them a stamp that is hard to miss: names of European cities beginning with B. Brescia, Bonn, Bolonia, Berna, Bruselas, Berlín. And among them, Baviera, which breaks the rule twice over: it is a region, not a city.
The neighborhood keeps a signwriter’s prank or two. It is said that the first sign for Venecia read BENECIA, a typo that fit suspiciously well with the obsession over the letter B. The origin of that alphabetical whim is unclear, and the honest answer is that no one knows.