Calle del Cerro Negro

The name comes from a feature of the land now almost erased from the map. The Cerro Negro was a rise in southeastern Madrid, beside the Abroñigal stream and the Entrevías area, which over time was buried beneath Mercamadrid and the tangle of tracks and sewers. Its surname points to the color of the earth: greenish-brown clays dotted with gypsum, a dark soil that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries drew botanists such as Boissier and Reuter. The street became part of the sector locals knew as Las Californias, a cluster of modest streets in what is now the Adelfas area. Alongside Seco, Barrilero and Luis Peidró, the Cerro Negro street formed a fabric of low houses. Of the hill itself little trace remains beyond the names. Whoever walks the street today treads the site of a rise of black earth.