Calle del Tamarindo

The tamarind is a large, long-lived tree of warm regions, with a leafy crown and brown pods enclosing a bittersweet pulp much prized in the kitchens of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Its name travels within the word itself: it comes from the Arabic tamr hindī, “date of India,” the way the Arab traders who spread its use across the Mediterranean knew it. From there it passed into botanical Latin as Tamarindus indica, though the tree actually comes from East Africa. The street occupies a corner of the southern part of the Atocha neighborhood, near the line of Méndez Álvaro. Around it the registry gathered names of trees such as Tejo and Mezquite, so that Tamarindo forms part of a small grove on paper, an area where the signs planted species that would never grow together in one climate. Why the city council chose the tamarind in particular for this stretch has not survived on record.