Calle de la Palmera

The name evokes a tree that in Madrid was never plentiful in the open air and that almost always arrived as an ornament for courtyards, roundabouts and grand gardens. The word comes from the Latin palma, the name of the palm of the hand: the broad leaves, opening into pointed segments, recalled outstretched fingers, and from there the word came to name the whole tree. Why this stretch of Almenara received that name has not been documented. The clue lies in the neighborhood. The street belongs to a cluster of streets named after flowers, shrubs and trees that weave a small street botany across the neighborhood: nearby run Heliotropo, Geranios, Vinca, Ailanto and the alley of the Nardo. The whole grew out of the working-class edge that spread north of Madrid around the old Tetuán de las Victorias, as building gradually took ground from the gardens and empty lots of La Ventilla, whose park still prolongs that leafy calling of the neighborhood.