Calle de Geranios

The name celebrates the geranium, that balcony flower that has tinted Madrid’s courtyards and windows red, pink, and white for generations. The plant isn’t native: the genus Pelargonium comes from southern Africa, and the first cultivated specimens reached Europe in the early seventeenth century on ships calling at the Cape of Good Hope. From there it jumped into flowerpots the world over until it became a byword for summer. Geranios belongs to a cluster of Almenara streets named after flowers, neighbors of roads like Margaritas and Azucenas. Many of those names were set in the mid-twentieth century, when Madrid absorbed the town of Chamartín de la Rosa and streets had to be renamed to avoid duplicates. Why this one got the geranium and not another flower hasn’t survived documented. Whoever walks it finds a quiet, residential street, faithful to the humble flower that names it: the kind anyone grows in a pot, with no greenhouse or special care.