Calle del Bidasoa

The street plan of El Viso was drawn as a map of rivers. When the colony was built in the 1930s, its streets received the names of watercourses from all over the peninsula, and this one was given the Bidasoa. It is joined by rivers such as the Tormes, the Sil, the Turia, the Arga and the Nervión, paper neighbours that never meet in reality. The Bidasoa rises in the mountains of Navarre and flows into the bay of Txingudi, between Irún and Hondarribia, right where Spain meets France. One account of its name links it to the Basque bide, “road,” after the route that led from Pamplona to the old Vascon port of Oiasso, today’s Irún. In its final stretch it holds a geographical oddity: Pheasant Island, the smallest condominium in the world, belongs to Spain half the year and to France the other half, and the two countries have taken turns with it since the 17th century. There, in 1659, their monarchs signed the Peace of the Pyrenees.