Calle Puerto de Béjar

The name comes from a real mountain pass. The Béjar pass opens a way through the Central System, on the border between Salamanca and Cáceres, beside the village of the same name and the peaks of the Béjar range. Over that saddle, at just under a thousand meters, the Vía de la Plata has climbed since antiquity, the Roman road linking Mérida with Astorga; the cobbled surface still survives along the ascent. The street belongs to a group of Arganzuela streets named after mountain passes, a way of bringing the geography of the Castilian ranges into the grid of southern Madrid. That is why a saddle of the Béjar range appears here rather than a person. Walking Puerto de Béjar means treading a flat Legazpi street named for a pass where migrating sheep and muleteers once crossed the divide. A pass of stone and snow turned into a street plaque among the warehouses and blocks of the old factory outskirts.