Calle de Carabaña

The name travels from the southeast of the Madrid region, where Carabaña sits beside the river Tajuña. The calle de Carabaña carries that place name into the heart of Legazpi, a corner of Arganzuela that went from orchards and pasture to an industrial district when the Ensanche reached down to the Manzanares. Carabaña’s fame came from its water. Around 1880 a pharmacist noticed the strange taste of a spring near the town and had it analyzed; within a few years its waters were declared mineral-medicinal and began to be bottled. Agua de Carabaña became the most famous purgative in Spain, sold across half the world and even advertised in New Zealand. A tile survives from those campaigns in the ghost station of Chamberí, now a museum, proclaiming it “the best purgative.”