Calle del Plomo

Lead gives this street its name: the heavy, bluish-gray, ductile metal that for centuries served for pipes, solder, printing type, and roofing. No specific reason is documented tying the street to any episode; the name follows a thematic scheme. Calle del Plomo belongs to the area of Legazpi known as Los Metales, a cluster of streets named after metals —⁠beside it, Zinc, Hierro, or Rodio⁠— in what was the manufacturing belt of southern Madrid. Here stood the municipal slaughterhouse and a fabric of workshops and warehouses that rose and declined across the twentieth century. Lead has been known since antiquity for how easily it melts and molds. It is also toxic: its slow buildup in the body causes lead poisoning. The Romans used it in their pipes without knowing the risk. Today the blocks of new housing and the nearness of Madrid Río have erased almost every trace of the old warehouses.