Calle del Arándano

The bilberry is a low mountain shrub that gives bluish, sour, tiny berries, common in the damp woods of the northern peninsula and almost foreign to Madrid’s dry ground. Its name here does not stem from its growing in the area but from a neighbourhood criterion: when this part of Valdeacederas was built up, the street plan grouped many of its streets under plant names. Nearby are Genciana, Crisantemo, Hierbabuena and Cantueso, and Calle del Arándano joined that street herbarium. The choice fits the past of the place. Valdeacederas means “valley of the sorrels,” after the wild sour herb that sprang up beside the streams, and before it filled with apartment blocks it was land of vegetable plots. The plant names prolonged that garden memory on the map. Today it is a short, residential stretch, of little more than seventy metres, with the Tetuán metro entrance a minute from the door.