Calle de Porfirio

In this corner of Berruguete, where streets cross in a tight grid and many carry just a given name, this one reads Porfirio with no surname, no date, no explanation. The name appears in the street registry, but nothing clarifies whom it recalls. The origin is undocumented. Porfirio comes from the Greek porphýrios, “purple,” the color of imperial purple. It was borne by a Neoplatonic philosopher and disciple of Plotinus and by a martyr of the early Christian centuries, though there is no way to know if either weighed in the street’s naming. Berruguete came late and in fits, like the whole strip of Tetuán that grew north of Madrid over old pastureland. An old name, purple in its echo, planted on a street of barely a hundred and thirty-seven meters that tells nothing of itself.