Calle Loriga

Behind this street sign in El Viso flies an airplane. Joaquín Loriga Taboada, born in Lalín (Pontevedra) in 1895, became a pilot when flying was still almost an act of faith. In April 1926 he took off from Cuatro Vientos in one of the three Breguet XIX aircraft of the squadron that linked Madrid with Manila: nearly 18,900 kilometers over some thirty days, hopping across North Africa, the Near East, India, and Southeast Asia. Two years earlier he had achieved another feat. In December 1924 he flew Juan de la Cierva’s autogyro —⁠the Spanish invention that tested near-vertical ascent before the helicopter existed⁠— from Cuatro Vientos to Getafe in just over eight minutes, a distance record for that newborn machine. The glory was short-lived. In July 1927, at thirty-one, Loriga died in an accident at the very airfield of Cuatro Vientos from which he had set out for Manila. The El Viso estate reserved for him this short, tree-lined street.