Calle Orcasitas
The street takes its name from Pedro Orcasitas Ruiz, owner of the land he ceded in 1922 to the Cooperative of Affordable Housing for Postal Workers to build the Postmen’s Colony in La Guindalera. The surname comes from a place name in the valley of Arcentales, in the Encartaciones of Biscay.
In 1922 a group of postmen banded together for something that sounded almost utopian at the time: building their own homes. The Cooperative of Affordable Housing for Postal Workers set its sights on a plot in La Guindalera known as the “Catalan’s orchard” or “Orcasitas orchard.” The owner, Pedro Orcasitas Ruiz, sold the land at 16.10 pesetas per square metre.
Between 1921 and 1930 a set of single-family houses rose there, topped with stepped gables of Flemish air, those triangular crowns that recall the façades of the Low Countries. The neighbourhood was hemmed in by the streets Brasilia, Brescia, Martínez Izquierdo and Orcasitas, and given a singular name: the Thebussian Group, in tribute to the writer and gastronome Mariano Pardo de Figueroa, honorary postman of Spain.
The surname that named the street comes from a spot in the valley of Arcentales, in Biscay, where in Basque it meant a place of chamois, roe deer and billy goats.
Sources (6)
- La Colonia de los Carteros — Por las calles de Madrid
- Los gabletes flamencos de la Colonia de los carteros — MadridMetrópolis
- Origen del nombre Orcasitas — El rincón de Mayrit
- Orcasitas (Usera, Madrid) — Urbancidades
- Origen y significado del apellido Orcasitas — Heráldica de Apellidos
- Mariano Pardo de Figueroa — Wikipedia