Calle de las Lilas

The lilac gives its name to this short street in Nueva España, a stretch of barely a hundred metres in northern Chamartín. It belongs to a group of streets named after plants: close by run Calle de los Cipreses and Calle de Saxífraga, in what works as a small street-name herbarium. The common lilac reached European gardens from the Balkans, where it grows wild on stony slopes. The genus name comes from the Greek syrinx, referring to the hollowness of its stems, from which flutes could be made. In April and May it opens clusters of flowers ranging from white to deep purple, with a scent hard to obtain by natural distillation and usually reproduced synthetically in perfumery. There is no written record of the exact reason for the choice on this street. It fits the neighbourhood’s logic, where a set of streets was named after flowers and shrubs rather than dates or battles.