Calle de Gargantilla

The name points to the word garganta, which in Castilian place-names marks a gorge, a narrow mountain pass where water slips between the rocks. Its diminutive, gargantilla, names several places in Spain, and the closest to Madrid is Gargantilla del Lozoya, at the foot of the Carpetano range, where the name keeps the memory of a hollow down which the mountain water runs. In the Las Acacias neighborhood, Gargantilla sits among streets named after villages and landscapes, a common habit in this stretch of Arganzuela when it was built up across the Manzanares. No record survives of why the street registry chose this name. The word also carries a second meaning in Spanish, the necklace worn close to the throat, born of the same root.