Calle de Otero
A 56-metre street in the Guindalera (Salamanca, postcode 28028), between Calle Antonia Ruiz Soro and Calle del Canalillo. The name corresponds to a probable owner or grantor of a plot during the neighbourhood’s parcelling (1880-1930); no published source identifies the specific person.
Calle de Otero runs barely fifty-six metres through the southern Guindalera, between Antonia Ruiz Soro and Calle del Canalillo. It is one of those streets a walker crosses without noticing, but its name holds more than it seems.
The neighbourhood grew from the mid-nineteenth century as an extension of the eastern Ensanche, and named its streets by mixing three worlds: the surnames of those who owned or parcelled the land, the public figures of the moment, and what the landscape itself dictated, like the Canalillo, a branch of the Canal de Isabel II. Otero belongs to the first group: it carries the surname of the plot’s owner or grantor, a widespread custom in Madrid’s colonies between 1880 and 1930. The surname hides a small feature of the terrain, since otero is an isolated hill rising above the plain.
One loose end invites a search. Neither Répide nor the later directories record any entry for this street. Putting a face to the Otero who granted the plot would mean combing the Archivo de Villa or Madrid’s Property Register.