Calle Transversal

The name says what the street does. A Transversal street is the one that cuts across others at right angles, threading the grid without being its axis. Barely a hundred metres in the Hispanoamérica quarter, in Chamartín, among the low blocks that grew up to the northeast of Madrid with the villa estates that brought the garden city to the outskirts. In those layouts the lesser streets often took utilitarian names before the map christened them with illustrious surnames. Here the sign stayed. The surrounding quarter does look far afield: its streets bear the names of nations and cities across the Atlantic. Among Bolivia, Caracas, and Cuba, the Transversal street is the one that boasts no origin and only points to where things cross.