Calle de la Viña

The name records what stood here before the houses: a viña, a plot of vines planted to yield grapes. No record survives of the exact reason or of the particular vineyard that inspired it, but it fits what northern Madrid was well into the 19th century. Before Vallehermoso filled with blocks and doorways, all of this was outskirts: orchards, pastures, brickworks and small plots where grain was sown and vines were raised. Madrid came to have tens of thousands of hectares of vineyard, and the grape was part of the town’s everyday landscape. Little more than the word remains of that countryside. The city’s growth erased the vines beneath the layout of the expansion, and today only the name recalls that clusters ripened here.