Calle Risco del Pájaro

In the Sierra de Guadarrama, within La Pedriza de Manzanares, rises a granite crag of 1,549 meters whose sharp summit resembles a bird perched on the rock. From that silhouette comes its name, and from that name comes Calle Risco del Pájaro, in Ciudad Jardín, faithful to the neighborhood’s custom of naming its streets after mountain landscapes. The crag is much more than a geological curiosity. La Pedriza was Madrid’s first climbing school, and El Pájaro its most famous wall: its first ascent, in 1916, ended with the climbers forming a human ladder to clear the last stretch and crown the spire. No record explains why the street plan chose this crag among so many others in the range. Whoever walks this street in Chamartín treads the echo of a mass of stone that rises one hundred eighty meters on its southern face above the floor of La Pedriza.