Calle Elvira

A minor street in Fuente del Berro (Salamanca district) whose name preserves a woman’s first name of Germanic root, without any source identifying the actual person. It appears in the Official Street Register with code 261800 and a conventional registration date of 01/01/1902; the first entrances appear around 1935, in the Iturbe development.

The name sounds like someone with a biography, but no one knows who she was. Elvira is a woman’s first name of Germanic root, sounding Gelvira in its Visigothic form, and in the late 19th century it filled Madrid’s minor street map. Here, though, no source gives it a face: neither the classic chroniclers, nor the municipal encyclopedia, nor the Council itself identify the woman honored. It is said she may have owned the land or been a relative of the developer, though nothing confirms it. The street arose in Fuente del Berro, within the Iturbe I development, opened in May 1926. Behind it was Gregorio Iturbe, a Navarrese industrialist who from 1912 promoted housing. The first residents appear in the records around 1935. The official register enters the Calle de Elvira on 1 January 1902, a filler date the administration assigns to streets with no known exact registration.

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