Calle Hoyuelo
The name comes from a minor feature of the land: a hoyuelo, the diminutive of hoyo, means a small hollow in the ground in Spanish. The area was developed with the Ensanche de Castro in the last quarter of the 19th century, and the street name seems to survive from the earlier rural landscape. No document has been found to say exactly when the street and its matching passage were named.
The word hoyuelo, the diminutive of hoyo, means a small natural hollow in the ground. That is where this street gets its name: it belongs to the rural micro-place-names that described the terrain on Madrid’s southern outskirts before the city reached them in the last quarter of the 19th century. That old patchwork of fields was full of streams, hills and hollows, and several of those descriptive names ended up fixed in the street plan.
When the Ensanche de Castro reached the Pacífico area, those rural names survived the change. Today the Retiro district keeps two: Calle de Hoyuelo, which begins at Calle del Alberche and ends at Calle de Pedro Bosch, and Pasaje de Hoyuelo, which links it to Avenida de la Ciudad de Barcelona.
The street also frames a garden with a name of its own. In May 2021 the city council named the green space between Avenida de la Ciudad de Barcelona, Calle de Pedro Bosch and Calle de Hoyuelo the Jardín de Elisa Serna, in honour of the protest-song singer-songwriter.