Calle del Miño

The Miño rises in the Sierra de Meira, in Lugo, and runs through Galicia until it empties into the Atlantic, marking the border with Portugal in its final stretch. It is the longest river in Galicia and the fullest in the northwest of the peninsula once it takes in the Sil. The origin of the place name has long been disputed. One line traces it to the Latin minium, vermilion or red lead, for the reddish color of the lands its waters crossed; another goes back to a Paleo-European root tied to the Indo-European mei-, “to go, to flow.” In Roman times it already appeared as Minius in Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy, and it is drawn on the Tabula Peutingeriana. The street belongs to the colony Rafael Bergamín designed between 1933 and 1936, a Rationalist experiment of low houses and courtyards where the street map filled with river names: nearby lie the Sil, a tributary of the Miño itself, alongside the Arga, the Nervión, the Tormes, and the Turia.