Calle de la Buganvilla

The calle de la Buganvilla takes the name of a climber from the forests of South America, famous for its violet, fuchsia or orange bracts that many mistake for petals. The true flowers are tiny and white; the spectacle comes from those modified leaves that drape southern walls in their blazing colour. The name travels with an expedition. Between 1766 and 1769 the French soldier and navigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville sailed around the world, and aboard his ship was the naturalist Philibert Commerson, tasked with collecting plants. Commerson noticed the vine during a stop in Rio de Janeiro and linked it to the leader of the voyage. From Bougainvillea, reshaped by the Spanish ear, came “buganvilla”. The street lies in a corner of the Castilla neighbourhood where the map reached for the garden to name its streets, a Madrid habit that filled the city with magnolias, daisies and lavenders. Madrid’s climate rarely lets the bougainvillea bloom with the fury it has back home.