Calle de Vargas

The surname Vargas belongs to one of the oldest lineages in the town, settled here since Alfonso VI took the place around 1083. The first of the name received lands from the king and became a well-off landowner; a farmhand named Isidro worked that land in his service, and in time was canonized as the patron saint of Madrid. The family had ancestral houses beside the calle de Segovia, around the Plaza de la Paja. This calle de Vargas, however, is a short, discreet street in the Ríos Rosas neighborhood, opened with the layout of the nineteenth-century expansion. No record survives of which Vargas it was dedicated to; crediting the medieval knight would be assuming more than the sources say. One fact remains for whoever walks it: the surname was born in a Cantabrian village called Vargas, from varga, an old dialect word meaning “slope” or “hillside”, a mountain name that has ended up on a flat Madrid street.