Calle del Genil

The name comes from the river Genil, the largest tributary of the Guadalquivir, which descends from the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, waters the plain of Granada, and enters the Córdoba countryside before giving up its waters. Its name has ancient roots, from the Latin Singilis to the Arabic transcriptions; a popular reading broke that name down as “a thousand Niles,” a compliment to the flow the river receives from the mountain thaws. The street belongs to the El Viso neighborhood, developed in the 1920s as a garden city of villas and tree-lined streets. Much of the street map was named after peninsular rivers, so Genil shares its surroundings with other streets bearing the names of Spanish waterways. Walking here today, you find a short, quiet street, barely three hundred meters, among low façades and gardens, far from the river that lends it its name. The water that gave rise to the word still runs hundreds of kilometers to the south, beneath the snow of the Mulhacén.