Calle de Tortosa

The sign travels from southern Catalonia. Tortosa is today the capital of the Baix Ebre, in the province of Tarragona. It began as a settlement of the Ilercavones, the Iberian people who lived at the mouth of the Ebro, under the name Dertosa. Rome made it a municipality; the Muslims called it Turtuxa, until Ramón Berenguer IV brought it into the Crown in 1148. From that Iberian Dertosa came the Tortosa that names this short street in Arganzuela. The street belongs to a neighborhood that carries its own history of mistaken names. For more than a century it was called Palos de Moguer, the fruit of an old confusion about Columbus’s port of departure. In 2022, after a residents' consultation, the whole neighborhood recovered the correct name of the town in Huelva from which the caravels set sail. No record survives of the specific reason Tortosa was chosen for this street.