Calle de Uruguay

Calle de Uruguay owes its name to the South American country, set in a quarter that repeats the same idea street after street. When Madrid developed this part of the former Chamartín de la Rosa, its streets were named after the Spanish-speaking American republics: nearby lie Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia and Nicaragua, along with the squares of Ecuador, Perú and the República Dominicana. For that same reason the quarter is called Hispanoamérica. The country’s name comes from much earlier and much farther away. Uruguay comes from Guaraní and first named the river that both divides and joins its two banks. Its exact meaning is still debated: for some it is the “river of the birds,” from urú (bird) and guay (water or river); for others it refers to the urú, a partridge-like species; and some read it as “river of the snail.” Thousands of kilometers from that river, the word has come to rest on a blue plaque in northeastern Madrid.