Calle del Tormes

The name recalls the river Tormes, which rises in the Sierra de Gredos and runs down through Ávila, Salamanca, and Zamora to surrender its waters to the Duero. It is, above all, Salamanca’s river: it passes beneath the city’s Roman bridge, skirts the university, and lent its surname to the first rogue in our literature, that Lázaro who claimed to have been born inside its channel. The street belongs to the El Viso estate, the rationalist development Rafael Bergamín designed in the 1930s on one of the highest points in Madrid. Its streets were named after Spanish rivers, turning the map into a small atlas of waterways: alongside the Tormes run the Arga, the Sil, the Turia, and the Nervión.