Calle de Menorca
The street takes its name from the island of Menorca, the second largest in the Balearic archipelago. It belongs to a group of streets in the Ibiza neighbourhood that received island place names when they were developed under the Castro Plan, approved by Royal Decree on 19 July 1860.
Calle de Menorca was born with the extension that Carlos María de Castro designed for Madrid, approved by Royal Decree on 19 July 1860 and built mostly in the 1870s and 1880s. East of the Retiro, the planners decided to name the parallel streets after the great islands of the Balearic archipelago. The Calle de Ibiza served as the axis, with the Calle de Menorca and the Calle de Mallorca on either side.
That elder sister, the Calle de Mallorca, lost its island name in 1908, when it became the Calle del Doctor Castelo in memory of the physician Eusebio Castelo, who specialised at the neighbouring Hospital de San Juan de Dios.
The name Menorca comes from far back. It derives from the Latin Minorica, because the Romans called Baliaris Minor the island that Quintus Caecilius Metellus conquered in 123 BC, to tell it apart from its larger neighbour, Baliaris Maior.
Sources (6)
- Calle de Ibiza — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Calle del Doctor Castelo — Madrid: sus viejas calles (blog)
- Un paseo por la calle Ibiza de la ciudad de Madrid — Periódico de Ibiza
- Menorca — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Eusebio Castelo Serra — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Ensanche de Madrid — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre