Calle de Lisboa

This short street in the Argüelles district takes its name from Lisbon, the Portuguese capital looking out over the estuary of the Tagus, the river that rises in the Peninsula and flows into the Atlantic opposite the Portuguese city. Honouring a foreign city fits the Madrid custom of naming streets after places, scattered across the whole urban fabric like a dispersed atlas. Lisbon carries its own founding legend. Ulysses is said to have raised it on his way back from Troy, whence the old name Olisipo would derive, though the soberer etymology points to Phoenician roots tied to a safe cove. The city was all but erased by the earthquake of 1755, which shook the Atlantic and was felt in Madrid too. Here in Argüelles the street is a brief stretch, little more than a hundred metres, with barely a handful of numbered doorways.