Calle de Valderribas
The name recalls the historic estate and road of Valderribas, an area southeast of Madrid between the Retiro and the district of Vallecas. The commandery of Palacios y Valderribas belonged to the Marquisate of Leganés. The road that crossed it appears in the press from 1806 as a safe route between Vallecas and the court, an alternative to the tollgate on the main road. When the Pacífico district was built up in the last third of the 19th century, the new grid followed its course and inherited the place name. The name is built on the Castilian pattern val de ribas, from the Latin ripa —slope or riverbank—, common in the place names of Madrid’s outskirts.
Calle de Valderribas was born from a road. Before the Pacífico district existed, a path called Camino de Valderribas ran out of the town of Vallecas and down toward the walls of the Retiro. It is mentioned as early as 1806, and it had one concrete advantage: it dodged the tollgate on the main road, the fee you had to pay to enter by the official route.
The name came from further back. Valderribas was an estate, a stretch of land southeast of Madrid folded into the commandery of Palacios y Valderribas, within the Marquisate of Leganés. The place name breaks down into val(le) de ribas: riba comes from the Latin ripa, which in the Middle Ages named both the banks of a river and steep slopes.
When the Southern Expansion was built up in the last third of the 19th century, Pacífico’s new grid roughly followed the line of that old road. Along the street today stand the engine hall of the former Pacífico Power Station, an Antonio Palacios design now the Andén 0 museum space, and the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Paz. One warning: this Valderribas has nothing to do with the Valderrivas neighborhood in Vicálvaro, which arose in the 20th century from the Portland Valderrivas cement works.