Calle Mallorca

Calle de Mallorca barely breathes: a short stretch between calle del Doctor Fourquet and the Ronda de Atocha, in Embajadores. It does not even appear on the 1875 maps, because almost everything here was open ground. The quarter sprang up when the grounds of the Royal Saltpetre Factory were sold off in 1869, and when new streets were opened someone decided to name them after Spanish geography. The official naming came on 11 November 1902. The curious thing is that this was not Madrid’s first calle de Mallorca. In 1889 there was another at the opposite end of the city, beside the Retiro, forming a Balearic trio with Menorca and Ibiza. In 1908 the council renamed it Doctor Castelo, and the name Mallorca crossed Madrid to reappear here, next to Atocha.

The name Mallorca was first applied to a different street: the one now called Doctor Castelo, in the Retiro district, where it formed a series with the streets of Menorca and Ibiza. When in 1908 the City Council decided to rename it in honour of the physician Eusebio Castelo y Serra, the Balearic name was moved to the new thoroughfare opened beside the Ronda de Atocha, so that the street Peñasco and Cambronero described as Mallorca in 1889 and the one that bears the name today are different streets in different districts.