Calle de Vallehermoso

The name was given by the locals before the town hall made it official. It means what it says: valle hermoso, “beautiful valley”, the open country that stretched northwest of the town, beyond the old Paseo de Areneros, now Alberto Aguilera; past that line there was only field. The street begins at that boundary and climbs north through the Arapiles and Vallehermoso neighborhoods, the second named after it. The fact that most surprises the walker lies beneath the stadium turf. The Vallehermoso Stadium was built on the ground of the vanished San Martín cemetery, opened as a sports venue in 1961. There, in 1987, Danny Harris ended Edwin Moses’s nine-year unbeaten streak in the 400-meter hurdles, on the first tartan track Spain ever had.