Calle de Bercial

Bercial here names neither a person nor an event, but a kind of landscape. A bercial is a piece of ground covered in berceo, a coarse wild grass related to esparto that thrives in the dry soils of the peninsular interior. From that feature of the countryside came several Castilian towns called Bercial or El Bercial. Which particular Bercial the street refers to is not documented, nor is there any record that a specific place inspired it: the name preserves above all the sense of the word, that of an open stretch of dry pasture. The street is short and quiet, on the southern edge of the old town, near the Rastro and the route that runs down towards the Manzanares. Before it was built up, this strip was orchards, meadows and riverside paths, pasture land like the kind that gave a bercial its name.