Calle Buganvilla

The bougainvillea comes from South America, from the forests of Brazil and Peru, and reached Europe in the 18th century with Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s round-the-world expedition. The botanist accompanying the sailor described it and fixed the genus with the captain’s surname, which Spanish softened into buganvilla. That burst of magenta or orange covering whole facades is not flowers, but bracts that wrap around tiny white flowers. Buganvilla runs through the Castilla neighborhood, in Chamartín, alongside the calle de la Hiedra and the calle del Bambú, all from the same botanical batch of the municipal pen. It is a very short street, and the plant, which asks for Mediterranean sun and warm walls, survives here more on the sign than on the wall.