Calle de Ávila

The name comes from the province of Ávila, in the south of Castile and León, land of the Gredos range, of the wall that girds its old town and of Saint Teresa of Ávila. The street recalls neither a person nor an event, but a place: it belongs to the group of Cuatro Caminos streets named after Spanish provinces. Whoever walks here strings together half the country’s geography in a few blocks, with Cuenca, Oviedo, Palencia and La Coruña on either side. As this sector of the old Tetuán de las Victorias was built up over the roads leaving Madrid to the north, the new street map was named with a handy repertoire: the provinces on the map. Ávila ended up a short, wide one-way street linking avenida del General Perón with calle de Orense. The place-name is pre-Roman and its meaning is not securely documented.