Calle de Alicante

The name points southeast: Alicante, city and province of the Mediterranean Levante, looking out to sea between Murcia and the Valencian coast. Calle de Alicante belongs to a group in the Delicias neighbourhood where the streets bear the names of Spanish provinces and cities. A few steps away runs calle de Murcia, and place names from across the peninsula are scattered throughout the area. No record survives of why Alicante was chosen for this particular street. The neighbourhood grew up at the end of the nineteenth century in the triangle drawn by the first railway stations of southern Madrid. A short walk away stands the old Delicias station, opened in 1880 before Alfonso XII and María Cristina as the head of the line linking Madrid with Ciudad Real and, beyond it, with the Portuguese border at Badajoz. It closed to traffic in 1969 and now keeps locomotives under its great iron hall as the Railway Museum.