Calle de Castilla

The sign on this Bellas Vistas street looks toward the heart of the plateau: Castile, the region that gave its name to a kingdom and a crown. The place-name was born of the military geography of the early Middle Ages. On the frontier with al-Andalus, the small northern counties bristled with fortresses and watchtowers, and from that landscape came the name: from the Latin castellum, “castle”. A document from the year 800 already spoke of a territory called Castelle where before it was Bardulia. Bellas Vistas grew in the late 19th century as a district west of the old road to France, today Bravo Murillo. Many of its streets took the names of Spanish regions and cities, and Castilla joined that list without any surviving reason why it was chosen here. Today it runs down from Bravo Murillo between numbered doorways and local shops, a step from Cuatro Caminos: a name of fortresses for a street of neighbourhood stores.