Calle Mallorca
The name refers to the island of Mallorca, the largest of the Balearics. The Latin form Baliaris Maior gave rise to Maiorica, which the Arabs transcribed as Mayurqa and medieval Castilian adapted as Mallorca. Madrid’s City Council officially named the street on 11 November 1902.
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.
Its names
- Sin nombre / SolarHasta c. 1895
- Calle de Mallorca11 de noviembre de 1902 – actualidad
Sources (5)
- Calle de Mallorca (Madrid) – Wikipedia
- Doctor Castelo (Calle del) – Madrid: sus viejas calles
- Peñasco de la Puente, H. y Cambronero, C. (1889). Las calles de Madrid: noticias, tradiciones y curiosidades. Madrid: Est. tipográfico Enrique Rubiños – BNE Digital
- Calle del Salitre – Wikipedia (contexto urbanístico)
- Historia de Baleares: origen de la toponimia de las islas – Última Hora