Calle Florencio Díaz

A 72-meter street in the Fuente del Berro neighborhood (Salamanca district) linking the Paseo del Marqués de Zafra with calles Diego Bahamonde and Rafael Juan y Seva. The name probably belongs to an owner or resident of the area during the building of the Iturbe developments in the 1920s; no authoritative source confirms his identity.

The Calle Florencio Díaz runs through the Fuente del Berro neighborhood, one of the historic colonies of the eastern expansion. That area was built in two stages. In 1879 a workers' society, El Porvenir del Artesano, bought land to house its members. Between 1925 and 1929 came the second wave: Gregorio Iturbe built the Iturbe developments under the Cheap Housing Act, to plans by the architect Enrique Pfitz. The streets of that grid, Diego Bahamonde, Rafael Juan y Seva, Florencio Díaz, follow a custom of the expansions: naming them after people of no public standing, usually plot owners or locally weighty neighbors. And here is the curious part. Anyone searching for this Florencio Díaz will find nothing: not a biographical entry, not a trace in the urban encyclopedias. A name that holds up a whole street and of which not one line remains.

Sources (6)