Calle de Cafeto
Bears the name of the coffee plant, the shrub that yields coffee, in a neighbourhood that named its streets after plants.
The coffee plant is the shrub from which coffee springs. It grows as a small evergreen tree, bears white, fragrant flowers and then red fruits the size of a cherry: inside they hold the beans roasted for the cup. It belongs to the genus Coffea, of which about a dozen species are grown, arabica foremost.
The name suits its setting. Calle de Cafeto belongs to the Adelfas neighbourhood, in Retiro, an area that took its name from a Mediterranean shrub and spread that idea to several of its streets. Why the coffee plant in particular was chosen has not survived. The word travels from the Arabic qahwah, and the plant is linked to the Ethiopian region of Kaffa, where legend has it that monks drank its brew to stay awake at prayer.
The stretch walked today descends from the old outlying district of low houses known as Las Californias, which a renewal plan remade almost entirely from the 1980s on. Barely a trace of those homes remains.