Calle Lérez

The name comes from a Galician river. The Lérez crosses the lands of Forcarei and Cotobade and dies in the Atlantic, forming the estuary of Pontevedra. It also lent that city its name: the Roman bridge laid across its waters gave the Latin pontem veteram, “old bridge.” The street belongs to a corner of El Viso where the map of street names reads like a river atlas of Spain. Nearby run the Arga, the Nervión, the Sil, the Tormes, and the Turia; Calle Lérez adds the Galician flow to that roll call. The estate was born in the 1930s as a cooperative of low-cost housing and over time went from a modest neighborhood to one of the most expensive areas in Madrid. A little street barely a hundred meters long holds, unknown to the passerby, the echo of those green waters that rise with the tide.