Calle de las Azulinas
It takes its name from the azulina, an ornamental plant with blue flowers, part of the botanical repertoire that named much of the Nueva España district.
The name comes from a flower. The azulina is an ornamental plant with blue flowers, grown in gardens for its colour, and the street picks up that blue without fuss.
The street lies in the Nueva España district of Chamartín, a grid laid out in the mid-20th century over the old northern outskirts. Anyone walking it alongside its neighbours will notice a shared air of urban herbarium: nearby run Cipreses, Abedul, Lilas and Saxífraga. Naming a whole cluster of streets around a single theme was common practice in Madrid whenever an entire sector was developed, and here the choice fell to the plant kingdom.
There is no record of why the azulina was chosen over so many other flowers for this particular street. Today Azulinas is a short residential stretch that links up with Apolonio Morales and Francisco Suárez, in a neighbourhood of schools and embassies.