Calle del Bronce

Bronze, the alloy of copper and tin from which tools, bells and statues have been cast since antiquity, lends its name to this street in southeastern Legazpi. It was named not by a person but by a shared scheme: the so-called Metals district, where the streets were labeled with the names of metals and minerals. A few steps away run the streets of Hierro, Plomo, Zinc, Cromo, Rodio, Antracita and Ónice. The industrial character of the area goes back a long way. The expansion approved in 1860 set aside this southern flank of Madrid for factories and workshops, and for decades the zone was full of sheds, warehouses and machinery. The naming after metals came later, in the twentieth century, when the area was built up as a residential district. Today its housing coexists with the odd surviving shed from the district’s factory past.