Calle de Tarragona

The name carries to Arganzuela one of the oldest cities on the peninsula: Tarragona, capital of the Catalan coast and once the head of Roman Hispania Tarraconensis. The street belongs to that part of the district where the streets gather Spanish place names. The city has a pre-Roman origin. Before Rome there was an Iberian settlement of the Cessetani people; from the attested root Tarakon the Latin Tarraco would derive, though its exact meaning is undocumented. Under Rome it became one of the great capitals of Hispania; its walls, amphitheater, and aqueduct still stand by the sea. The Madrid street shares none of that monumental past. Its apartment blocks went up in the mid-20th century, with small flats for a working-class Arganzuela full of people arrived from elsewhere. A name with roots more than two thousand years old over modern doorways.