Avenida del Mediterráneo
The avenue takes the name of the Mediterranean Sea as the urban stretch of the road that led from Madrid to Valencia and the Mediterranean coast. It begins at Plaza de Mariano de Cavia as the continuation of the Paseo de la Reina Cristina, forms the southern edge of the Niño Jesús neighbourhood and the northern edge of Adelfas, and ends at Plaza del Conde de Casal.
The name evokes the sea, but this avenue never touches it: it names the urban stretch of a road that does point toward it. The N-3 passed this way, the highway linking Madrid with Valencia and Castellón, before outbound traffic moved to the A-3 motorway. The sign recalls that Mediterranean destination.
The avenue begins where the Paseo de la Reina Cristina ends, at the plaza de Mariano de Cavia, and finishes at the plaza del Conde de Casal. Beneath that roundabout, mayor Carlos Arias Navarro opened an underpass in 1965 that links the two roads and clears the surface of the junction.
It is a street with no old past. The chroniclers who catalogued Madrid’s streets in the first quarter of the twentieth century do not mention it, because it did not yet exist: it belongs entirely to the twentieth century.