Calle de las Canarias

Las Canarias recalls the Canary archipelago, the seven main islands off the northwest coast of Africa. The place name has a Latin root. According to the account preserved by Pliny the Elder, one of the islands was named Canaria, the island of dogs, for the large hounds taken from there to Mauretania, and the name ended up covering the whole group. From that same root comes, centuries later, the bird that Europeans carried from the islands to their cages and that came to be called the canary. The street runs through the Arganzuela neighborhood now known as Palos de la Frontera, a name that replaced Palos de Moguer, by which it went for decades. No record survives of the date or municipal decision that fixed the street’s name, beyond its reference to the archipelago.