Calle de la Chumbera

The calle de la Chumbera takes its name from an unmistakable cactus: flat paddles bristling with thorns, yellow flowers and the prickly pear peeking out at the edges. It belongs to a group of nearby streets named after humble plants —⁠the calle del Saúco, the calle de la Hierbabuena⁠—⁠, that taste in the Berruguete street map for roadside and garden plants. Why this plant was chosen for this stretch has not been documented. The prickly pear does have a history. Native to Mexico, it crossed the Atlantic in the sixteenth century among the first American species to take root in the Old World, and from the Canaries and Seville it spilled across the whole Mediterranean arc until it seemed to have always been there. It was first planted to raise the cochineal insect, from which a highly prized red dye was drawn, and later it stayed on to fence off plots and give figs in summer. Berruguete is the smallest neighborhood in Tetuán and also the most tightly packed, with steep streets and modest houses. A desert cactus does well in that soil of brick and little earth.