Calle de Oviedo

When Cuatro Caminos grew at the start of the twentieth century as a working-class fringe north of the old road to France, the map reached for an orderly device: to spread the geography of Spain across the plan. So Cuenca, Palencia, Jaén, Ávila, Salamanca and this Oviedo appeared side by side. The name hides no mystery or tribute: it is the Asturian capital set on a plaque. Oviedo, founded around a monastery in the eighth century, became the court of the Asturian kingdom. None of that northern history has anything to do with the Madrid street; what links them is the administrative gesture of covering a new district with a national map. Today the plaque of Oviedo barely draws attention among shops and doorways, in an area that went from humble outskirts to a central, sought-after district.