Calle Turia

The name comes from the Turia river, the flow that descends from the Albarracín range, in Teruel, crosses the Valencian farmland and dies in the Mediterranean. In its upper stretch it is known as Guadalaviar, from the Arabic wadi al-abyad, “white river”; downstream it becomes the Turia, a pre-Roman word that Latin authors already recorded. Calle Turia is one of those that close the perimeter of the El Viso estate, the set of low white houses that Rafael Bergamín built from 1933 on one of the highest points of Madrid. Its streets bear the names of rivers of Spain: here fall, side by side, the Tormes, the Sil, the Arga, the Nervión and this Turia, like a small river atlas drawn on the map of the neighborhood. The street sits on dry, elevated ground, with no river but the one on its sign, while the real Turia carried a history of floods. The flood of 1957 swamped Valencia and ended up forcing the diversion of its course outside the city; the old bed became a garden that now crosses the town. Of that river, only the name reaches here, written on a plaque in the upper part of Madrid.