Calle de la Genciana
It bears the name of the gentian, a mountain plant with a bitter root, within a group of streets in Tetuán’s old fringe named after plants.
The gentian is a plant of the high pastures of central and southern Europe, found in the Pyrenees. Underground it hides what truly made it famous: a thick, fleshy root, so bitter that for centuries it served to whet the appetite and give character to vermouths and liqueurs. The name of the genus, Gentiana, is attributed to Gentius, king of Illyria in the second century BC, to whom tradition credits the discovery of its medicinal virtues.
Why this mountain plant ended up naming a street in Tetuán has not survived in writing. The Calle de la Genciana belongs to a small cluster of streets in the old fringe named after plants, alongside the nearby Calle del Trébol, in a corner that still keeps the air of a village. The neighborhood is called Valdeacederas, “valley of the sorrels,” another herb, and together they sketch a kind of street herbarium inherited from when this was orchards and empty lots north of Madrid.
On its west side four low single-story houses hold out, survivors of the humble Tetuán that took shape from 1860.