Calle Juan de los Ríos

Calle Juan de los Ríos most likely owes its name to an anonymous neighbour or landowner, not to a famous figure. The street was born in La Guindalera, the suburb that grew beside the old Aragón road from the second half of the nineteenth century. Much of the neighbourhood went up through private parcelling. In those developments the landowners were in charge, naming the streets as they pleased without going through the City Council. That is where calle Castelar, for instance, came from, dedicated to the Republican orator. In that setting Calle Juan de los Ríos emerged, on a date no document pins down. And however hard one looks, no Juan de los Ríos of public standing appears in the Madrid of those years. What remains, then, is the most plausible explanation, the same one repeated in so many outlying colonies: the name of a landowner or neighbour that everyday use fixed on the corner long before any official resolution ratified it.