Calle del Sodio

Sodium gives its name to this street at the eastern edge of Legazpi, one of many the registry christened with metals, minerals, and chemical elements. Whoever walks it finds nearby calle del Hierro, calle del Plomo, calle del Zinc, calle del Bronce, and calle del Rodio. The whole is popularly known as the Metals neighborhood. Sodium is a soft, silvery metal, so reactive that in nature it never appears free: it hides in common salt and in soda. The name comes from soda, and its symbol Na derives from the Latin natrium. The land was industrial ground inherited from the Castro Plan of 1860, dotted with workshops and transport firms beside the railway stations of southern Madrid. After decades of factories and warehouses, the area turned residential, keeping the signs on its streets as the only trace of its chemical past.