Calle del Áncora

The anchor presides over this broad street in the Ensanche Sur, between the paseo de las Delicias and calle de Méndez Álvaro. The anchor is the iron piece that bites into the seabed and holds a vessel firm against wind and current, a seafaring object stranded in a coastless Madrid. The explanation lies in the surroundings. These blocks, beside calle de Palos de la Frontera, gather the memory of the voyages of discovery and scatter a sea vocabulary through the street map: caravels, ports, shipboard instruments. The story goes that the neighbors themselves began calling it this, though it is also said that an anchor once stood here, perhaps brought from the royal launches of the Retiro or from the Canal wharf that ran alongside the Manzanares. Of that wharf nothing remains, nor of the anchor that may have named it. Only the iron painted on the sign.