Calle Algete

The street takes its name from Algete, a town in the north of the Madrid region overlooking the Jarama basin. Naming Madrid streets after towns in the region is an old custom, and this corner of Legazpi gathers several of them like a small map of the province drawn on the asphalt. The origin of the place name is not settled. The most common reading traces it to the Arabic al-šaṭṭ, “the riverbank”; against it, some note that the town centre lies more than five kilometres from the river, and prefer an Iberian root elge, “cultivated field.” Algete carries a long history: Bell Beaker pottery on the terraces of the Jarama, Roman villas and a Visigothic trace. Philip V raised it to a dukedom in 1728. From that town of hills and floodplains the name reached this short street in Arganzuela.