Calle de los Vizcaínos

The name points to a whole people. A vizcaíno is someone born in Vizcaya, now Bizkaia, the westernmost part of the Basque Country facing the gulf of the same name. For centuries the word served as a broad label: until nearly the nineteenth century almost anyone who came from the Basque north was called a Biscayan, whether from Gipuzkoa, Álava or Vizcaya itself. Madrid knew these people well. From the days of the Habsburg court, natives of the three provinces formed a large colony of officials, secretaries and merchants, and in 1715 founded their own congregation to look after their own. The capital set aside street names for Spanish regions and peoples, and this is one of them. The street belongs to the fabric that grew north of old Tetuán de las Victorias, the district that took its name from the Moroccan city after the 1860 war in Africa. Today it is less than three hundred metres of sober façades, running perpendicular to Pinos Alta, with the name of a whole land fixed to the plaque.