Calle de Cuenca

Cuenca appears on this stretch of Cuatro Caminos through a collective decision: when the neighbourhood laid out its grid in the early 20th century, several of its streets took the names of Spanish provinces. Around it sit Oviedo, Palencia, Jaén, Teruel and Ávila, in a northern edge of the city growing with the arrival of migrants from different provinces. The Cuenca that names the street is one of the most dramatic cities in Castile. It sits on a rocky spur between the gorges of the Júcar and Huécar rivers, and its old town holds one of the earliest Gothic cathedrals in Spain. From that fit of stone and precipice came its hanging houses, wooden balconies leaning out over the void above the Huécar gorge. From that city perched over the ravine, only the name arrives here, a plaque between Oviedo and Palencia.