Calle del Tejo

Calle del Tejo, in the Atocha neighborhood, takes its name from the tree of the same name. The specific reason for the choice has not survived. What remains is the tree and its symbolic weight. The yew (Taxus baccata) grows slowly and lives for centuries; the oldest specimens in northern Spain pass a thousand years, a longevity that made it an emblem of what seems not to die. Hence its presence beside hermitages and churches and its role in ancient rites, tied to the passage between life and death. That aura has a physical root. Almost the whole tree is poisonous —⁠leaves, bark, and the seed hidden inside the red fruit⁠— except for the fleshy pulp wrapping it, the aril, sweet and edible. Its wood, dense and springy, armed the finest bows of Europe for centuries. In the name of Calle del Tejo those two faces live together: the tree that poisons and the one that fires arrows.