Calle del Lozoya

The name comes from the river that quenched Madrid’s thirst. The Lozoya flows down from the Guadarrama mountains, and in the mid-19th century it became the answer for a capital that depended on wells and water carriers. On the night of 24 June 1858, after the works of the Canal de Isabel II, the mountain water first gushed from a temporary fountain at the end of Calle de San Bernardo. The city hailed that jet of water as a wonder. El Lozoya is a short street that begins at Bravo Murillo, in the heart of Arapiles, a district that grew with the city’s expansion and its new water pipes. Naming the street after the river set that life-changing engineering feat into the map. The place name, in medieval forms such as Loçoya, points to a Basque root of the settlers, linked to the idea of pastureland.