Calle del Urola

The Urola is a river in Guipúzcoa that rises on the slopes of the Aizkorri and runs some sixty kilometers through Legazpi, Azkoitia and Azpeitia before flowing into the Cantabrian Sea at Zumaia. Its name comes from the Basque ur, water, a root found in many Basque river names. The street belongs to the El Viso estate, the rationalist development Rafael Bergamín built in Chamartín from 1933 onward. The neighborhood’s street plan was laid out as a small river map of Spain: alongside the Urola run the Nervión, the Bidasoa, the Sil, the Miño and the Ebro. Anyone walking these blocks crosses in a few minutes river basins that on the real map lie hundreds of kilometers apart. Its stretch barely reaches a hundred meters. The river that named it, which drove mills and forges in its valley, fits whole into four letters on the wall of a 1930s house.