Calle de Colón

A street dedicated to the navigator, yes, but it earlier bore a name that tangled up half the city. On the maps of Teixeira (1656) and Espinosa (1769) it appears as Santa Catalina la Vieja; “vieja” (old) marked no antiquity but distinguished it from a more recent calle de Santa Catalina. It measures barely a hundred metres, from Fuencarral to the plaza de San Ildefonso, in the Universidad district. The renaming came on 10 March 1835, when the widowed Marquis of Pontejos, magistrate of Madrid, signed a reform that renamed nearly 240 streets to end duplicate names: Santa Catalina la Vieja became Colón, while other namesakes took the names of Cervantes, Hernán Cortés, and Pizarro. In these hundred metres two businesses with history survive. The Peluquería Urbano, at number 10, claims to be Madrid’s oldest barbershop, running since 1856. And the Bodegas La Ardosa, at number 13, opened in 1892, keep their original engraved-glass sign and tiled dado.

The cuplé “Colón, Colón”, composed around 1917 with lyrics by Eduardo Montesinos and music by Antonio Rincón, popularized the address “Colón 34” as the fictional residence of a cuplé singer. Sara Montiel performed it under that title in the film La Reina del Chantecler (1962, directed by Rafael Gil). Number 34 has never existed on the street: the road is too short to reach that numbering.