Calle de Biarritz
It takes its name from Biarritz, a coastal city in the French Basque Country (Pyrénées-Atlantiques department). The street forms part of the Parque de las Avenidas complex, developed by CIOHSA from 1956 on land in La Guindalera, where every street was given the name of a European city beginning with B.
Calle de Biarritz was born with the neighbourhood around it. In July 1956 the city council authorized building the Parque de las Avenidas complex at the request of CIOHSA, a company driven by the Former Students of the Areneros school. The architects laid out around Avenida de Bruselas some four thousand dwellings, of which about three thousand were finally built, in blocks of five to ten storeys, between 1957 and 1970.
Whoever walks the sector will find a game the street map hides at first glance: every street in the complex bears the name of a European city beginning with B. The only one to break the rule is Plaza de Venecia.
Biarritz, the city that lends its name, is a Basque enclave in southwestern France that already worked as a fishing port in the 11th century. Its fate changed in 1854, when Empress Eugénie ordered a palace built facing the beach, today the Hôtel du Palais, and turned that fishing village into one of the favourite resorts of the Belle Époque aristocracy.