Calle Anunciación

Before there were streets here, there were rubbish dumps, embankments and railway tracks. On this land in the Niño Jesús neighborhood stood, until the mid-20th century, the terminal station of the Tajuña Railway, which opened in 1886 and closed in 1964. In 1947, the Urbis property company began developing some twenty-eight hectares. The short Calle Anunciación takes its name from the feast of 25 March, when the Catholic calendar recalls the moment the archangel Gabriel appears before Mary to announce that she will be a mother. From that announcement hangs, nine months later, Christmas. Across calle Doctor Esquerdo, Urbis developed the La Estrella neighborhood from 1953 and kept playing with the names, this time looking to the sky: Sirius, Lyra, Southern Cross, Perseus. Some read that star as the Star of Bethlehem, an extension of the same Christmas cycle that begins with the Annunciation.