Calle del Pico del Águila

An eagle gives its name to this short street in Ciudad Jardín, though here the bird is only the crown of a mountain. The Pico del Águila⁠—⁠also called Peña del Águila⁠—⁠is a summit of the Sierra de Guadarrama rising to 2,008 meters, above Cercedilla. It is reputed to be the southernmost two-thousander in the whole range: the first the walker meets climbing from the south, poised between the Fuenfría valley and that of the Río de los Moros. The summit’s name belongs to a family of place names evoking birds of prey and sharp crests, scattered across half of Spain. In this corner of Chamartín, the streets of the old garden colony drew on a vocabulary of nature and mountains, and the eagle fit that open-air imagery. Why this particular peak was chosen, and not one of the Guadarrama’s many others, was never documented. The street barely reaches eighty meters, a tiny slope against the two thousand of the peak whose name it bears.