Calle del Eresma

The Eresma rises in the Valsaín valley, in the Sierra de Guadarrama, from the streams that come down from Peñalara and the Siete Picos, and runs north until it joins the Adaja on its way to the Duero. It wraps around Segovia in a tight bend, passes below the Alcázar, and for centuries drove the wool fulling mills. Its name comes from a pre-Roman word read as “the one that surrounds the great city.” The street belongs to the Colonia El Viso, the Rationalist neighborhood Rafael Bergamín designed between 1933 and 1936 as a garden city of low houses and courtyards. Many of its streets bear the names of Spanish rivers, so the map reads almost like a river chart: the Tormes, the Turia, the Arga, the Nervión, and this Eresma sit within a few blocks. It is a short stretch, under two hundred meters, bringing the flow of a Castilian river to one of the quietest colonies in Chamartín.