Calle del Hierro
It takes its name from the metal, within the group of Legazpi streets named after metals in memory of the industrial estate that occupied the area.
The name refers to the metal, iron, just as its neighboring streets are called del Plomo, del Zinc or del Bronce. Together they form what the locals christened the “Metals district,” a piece of Legazpi where the street map reads like a foundry inventory.
The reason lies in the ground. After the 1860 expansion plan, this southeastern sector of Madrid turned toward industry. Between the forties and fifties it filled with factories, workshops and industrial plants: print shops that ran magazines like Triunfo, boiler plants, treatment facilities. Naming the streets after metals was naming what was worked there.
Of that industrial estate barely a trace remains. From the late nineties the sheds gave way to blocks of flats, and today the iron survives only on the sign.