Calle del Oria

The name comes from a river in the north. The Oria rises on the slopes of the Aitzgorri range and flows down through Gipuzkoa to the Cantabrian Sea, reaching the coast beside the town of Orio after just over eighty kilometers that make it the province’s foremost river by length, basin and flow. The street is explained by its neighborhood. El Viso arranged much of its street plan with the names of Spanish rivers, and alongside the Oria appear the Turia, the Arga, the Sil, the Tormes and the Nervión. The neighborhood itself owes its name to a “viso,” the slightly raised ground on which it was built. The origin of the Basque place name is uncertain: in the 18th century it was linked to oria, “yellow,” for the murky color of its waters. The river carries an industrial memory: its paper mills left it almost without fish between the 1950s and 1980s, though trout have since returned to its reaches.