Calle de las Caleras

A calera was the kiln where limestone was burned for hours until it became lime, the material used for centuries to whitewash façades and set walls. The lime burner kept the fire going without rest while the mass calcined: work of the outskirts, with smoke, white dust and a heat felt from afar. Calle de las Caleras keeps the memory of that trade in a corner of El Viso. The neighbourhood was born in the 1930s as a colony of rationalist villas, over what had been open country. Many of the neighbouring streets took the names of rivers and painters; this one kept that of a humble, sweltering trade: quicklime, stone in the fire and burned hands, on a street that today smells more of garden than of kiln.