Calle Lérez

The name comes from a Galician river. The Lérez descends from the Candán mountains, 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.