Calle del Cañaveral

A cañaveral is a stretch of ground covered in cane, those tall hollow grasses that sprout thick along banks and wetlands. The word comes from the Latin canna, “cane,” with the suffix -al of abundance: a place where the plant covers everything. The calle del Cañaveral was not always called this. It was earlier calle de Menéndez Pelayo, and changed around 1948, when Tetuán was annexed to Madrid and many streets had to be rechristened to avoid repeating names already in use in the capital. The botanical baptism folded it into the plant vein of Almenara, the neighborhood locals still call La Ventilla. Here, in those years, cheap housing blocks were raised for an area that still dragged along rag-trades and shacks with no sewers. Today, the cane grows only in its name.