Calle de la Isla de La Gomera

This short street in the Berruguete neighborhood recalls La Gomera, the second-smallest of the Canary Islands, and is part of a group of nearby streets that took their names from the archipelago, with neighbors devoted to Tenerife, La Palma and Lanzarote. Naming whole grids with families of place-names was a custom of an expanding Madrid: it ordered the street map and gave identity to neighborhoods born almost overnight. The origin of the island’s name is lost before the Castilian conquest. The best-supported theory links it to the Ghomara, Berber peoples of North Africa, which would point to a settlement that came by sea from those shores. From La Gomera also comes the silbo gomero, a whistled language that bridged the ravines when no voice could reach the opposite slope; UNESCO declared it Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Calle de la Isla de La Gomera carries that name, come from the sea, into the street map of Tetuán.