Calle de Canillas

Whoever walks the calle de Canillas today follows, unknowingly, the line of an old road that left the city heading northeast, toward a village that then existed in its own right. Canillas was an independent municipality until 1950, when it was annexed to the capital; its name survives in a neighbourhood of the present Hortaleza district and in this road that pointed toward it. The origin of the place name lies in the Andalusi period: the most cited hypothesis links it to the underground galleries that carried water beneath the ground, with which the land north of Madrid was irrigated. The street grew up against Prosperidad, a working-class outskirt built at the end of the 19th century. A building or two from the 1920s still holds out among the new blocks, a witness to when this was the edge of town and the countryside began around the corner.