Calle Durán

In the El Viso estate, the grid of rationalist villas Rafael Bergamín began building in 1933, runs a very short street: Durán, barely a row of low houses. The name recalls someone with the surname Durán, but who that person was is undocumented. No record survives of the reason. In Madrid there is an Agustín Durán street dedicated to the scholar who compiled the nineteenth-century Romancero, but that is another street in another neighborhood. Among the architects of El Viso was Miguel Durán Salgado, a coincidence of surname that nothing allows us to link to this street’s sign. The surname remains on the plaque. Anyone walking down Durán moves through one of the highest parts of the city, where the neighboring streets take the names of rivers: Nervión, Tormes, Turia.