Calle de Almería
The street takes its name from the Andalusian province created by the territorial division of 1833. Municipal street records place the first entry of its numbering on 26 March 1910. The place name Almería comes from Andalusi Arabic al-Mariyya (‘watchtower’), from the original form Maríyyat Paǧǧāna.
Calle de Almería, in the Fuente del Berro district, runs between Calle de Alcalá and Plaza de América Española. It is an oddity of the street map: no one has managed to find out why it bears the name of that Andalusian province. Among the district’s 69 streets, no other shares its logic, and the choice is explained nowhere.
The neighbourhood grew in patches from the late 19th century. In 1879 the El Porvenir del Artesano cooperative bought land beside the Berro spring and raised the first workers' dwellings. Soon after, much of the neighbourhood worked at the Girod clock factory, opened in 1860. The historic street register notes the first doorway on 26 March 1910.
Almería was capital of its own taifa in the 11th century and became a provincial capital again with the 1833 territorial reorganization. Its Madrid streets, by contrast, were born mute: no one left the reason for the name in writing. Whoever strolls here today reads a place name that arrived without an introduction.
Sources (5)
- Callejero oficial del Ayuntamiento de Madrid — Evolución histórica (datos abiertos)
- Callejero vigente por distrito y barrio — Ayuntamiento de Madrid (datos abiertos)
- Almería — Toponomasticon Hispaniae
- El Camino de la Fuente del Berro, la fábrica de relojes y el barrio del Porvenir del Artesano — Arte en Madrid
- Historia de Almería — Wikipedia