Calle de Orense

The name comes from Orense, the Galician city on the Miño and capital of its province, today officially Ourense. The street belongs to that part of northern Madrid where the map filled with provincial place names. The city’s origin is Roman: it appears documented in the Middle Ages as Auriensis Civitas. One explanation ties its name to the gold the Miño carried; another to the thermal springs that still steam in the very heart of the city, the famous Burgas, where the water surges at more than sixty degrees. The street runs through Cuatro Caminos, that working-class northern fringe the metro brought closer to the rest of Madrid: on 17 October 1919 Alfonso XIII opened the first line between Cuatro Caminos and Sol. Today Orense is above all a street of bars and terraces, its liveliest stretch a step from Nuevos Ministerios.