Calle de Oruro

Oruro names one of the many streets that, in this corner of Chamartín, run through the map of Spanish America. The district works like a pocket atlas: a few steps away lie Cochabamba and Potosí, also Bolivian, while whole countries lend their names to neighbouring avenues and squares. The real Oruro rises at some 3,700 metres on the Bolivian altiplano, among bare mountains and a dry cold. Its name goes back to the Uru people, settled beside Lake Uru Uru long before the arrival of the Spanish crown. The colonial town was founded in 1606 as Real Villa de San Felipe de Austria, in honour of Philip III, after silver veins were found in its hills, and that metal shaped its fate: for centuries it lived off mining. Today Oruro is best known for its Carnival, which links old Andean invocations with devotion to the Virgin of Candelaria. The diablada, with its demon masks dancing in procession, is its most famous image, declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.