Calle del Arga
Takes its name from the river Arga, the main watercourse of Navarre, which waters Pamplona before handing its waters to the Aragón.
The name comes from the Arga, the river that crosses Pamplona and waters much of Navarre along its 145 kilometres before dying into the Aragón, near the Ebro. An old saying places it among its fellow rivers of the basin: “Ega, Arga y Aragón hacen al Ebro varón”.
The place name did not arrive in Madrid alone. The calle del Arga traces one of the edges of the El Viso colony, the enclave of white, straight-lined houses that Rafael Bergamín designed in the 1930s at the end of calle Serrano. Anyone walking the perimeter will find the names in a row: Tormes, Sil, Turia, Nervión. The developers ringed the neighbourhood with a river map of the peninsula, and the Arga took its place in that paper geography.
Today the Arga’s water still runs beneath the medieval bridges of Pamplona while its name rests, dry, on a plaque among the gardens.