Calle Mira el Río Baja

El Rastro·Embajadores

The name recalls the cry “look at the river!” that residents of Madrid’s outer quarters raised from the crag crowning this district beyond the walls as they watched the Manzanares floods. The main tradition, recorded by Capmany and later Répide, sets the founding episode in the torrential rains between October 1439 and January 1440. A plainer hypothesis suggests the place name arose simply from the street’s orientation toward the river when the site was built up, with no need for a dramatic episode.

Mira el Río Baja tumbles downhill. Its slope is so steep that Galdós, in Fortunata y Jacinta, sent a character out this way to nearly roll headfirst over the cobbles, turning cartwheels to keep his feet. The street descends from Mira el Río Alta to the square of the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo, and together the two trace the southern edge of the Rastro. It was once called Calle de las Pulgas (Fleas Street), a nickname that captures what it was: an outer quarter beyond the walls, a tight working-class settlement, improvised markets. Today’s name looks toward the crag from which the river was watched, an escarpment a landslide made vanish; in the gap it left, the neighborhood children coined a name, the New World.

Its names

  • Calle de las PulgasAnterior al 17th century (fecha precisa desconocida)
  • Calle de Mira el Río BajaSiglo 17th o anterior — vigente
  • Nombre actual confirmado en nomenclatorSiglo 19th (Nomenclator municipal)
Sources (8)

Crossings