Calle Flor de Lis

Behind the famous crowned emblem there is a real flower. The fleur-de-lis stylises the yellow marsh iris, Iris pseudacorus, a riverside herb that appears along the edges of streams and ponds with its three open petals and a burning gold. From that water plant came the symbol the kings of France bore on their coats of arms from the twelfth century on. The street belongs to a cluster of Almenara streets named after flowers, set in the mid-twentieth century when Madrid absorbed Chamartín de la Rosa and dozens of streets had to be renamed to resolve the duplicates. Why this one got the Flor de Lis in particular was never documented. Today it is a short stretch of barely fifty metres that bears, without knowing it, the name of a marsh plant turned into a crown.