Calle Circonita

Calle Circonita is born from a stone. It occupies a corner of the Delicias neighbourhood where the streets bear, one after another, the names of minerals and gems: Berilo, Alabastro, Caolín and, almost touching it, Circón, the stone from which it takes its diminutive. Anyone walking here crosses a small mineralogy display case traced onto the asphalt. Cubic zirconia shines with strength and transparency, which is why it is often mistaken for diamond. But the one sold in jewellers' shops is a crystalline imitation of zirconium oxide that a Soviet physicist managed to make in the laboratory in the seventies, and which spread the following decade as a cheap substitute for the costly gem. Delicias owes its name to the delights of the river, the pleasure grounds opened beside the Manzanares when Madrid set out to beautify its outskirts in the eighteenth century. Time separates that garden walk from the streets of minerals, but the neighbourhood still offers, on every corner, a different stone.