Calle Santiago Bernabéu

A few meters from the stadium that bears his surname, this street recalls Santiago Bernabéu de Yeste, born in 1895 in Almansa, in Albacete. He wore the white shirt of Real Madrid as a forward between 1912 and 1927, and in 1943 he took over the club as president, a post he held until his death in 1978. Under his leadership Real Madrid built a stadium in Chamartín, opened in December 1947. In 1955 the board decided to name the ground after him, while he was still alive, which explains why stadium and street share a surname in the same corner of the city today. The neighborhood it runs through, El Viso, was built in the 1930s as a rationalist estate of small villas with gardens. The widening of the Paseo de la Castellana and the stadium ended up surrounding it, and the street became a hinge between those quiet houses and the murmur of football afternoons.