Calle Cocheras
The name records the use the site had from the late 19th century onward: housing tram depots. In 1879 the Madrid–Arganda Tram Company built a depot with room for 24 cars in the Pacífico neighborhood, across from the facilities the Stations and Markets Tram already had there. The concentration of two depots in the same spot would explain the plural sign —Las Cocheras— later simplified to Cocheras in today’s municipal street register. The street took its name from the most visible feature of its surroundings, a common practice in Madrid’s street naming during the Restoration.
The Pacífico neighborhood grew out of the expansion approved in 1860, south of the Retiro and beside the Atocha tracks. When the first trams arrived, the southern end changed its look. In 1879 the Madrid–Arganda Tram Company was granted permission to build a depot with room for twenty-four cars, right across from the depot the Stations and Markets Tram already had there.
Two facilities in the same corner ended up naming the street. First it was called Las Cocheras, in the plural, and over time the name was shortened to Cocheras. The electrification of the trams, at the end of the century, turned the depots into workshops, and in 1916 the Pacífico depots fell out of service. The place name outlived the facilities that gave rise to it.