Pasaje del Dorado

When the Estrella neighborhood was laid out over old land east of Madrid, its streets were named looking to the sky. Around it stand calle de la Estrella Polar, calle de la Cruz del Sur, calle de Sirio, calle del Pez Volador and plaza de los Astros. On that celestial map, Pasaje del Dorado adds another constellation: that of the dolphinfish. Dorado is a southern-hemisphere group, invisible from Madrid. It was observed in the late sixteenth century by two Dutch navigators who mapped the southern sky. Its name evokes the mahi-mahi, the fish with metallic sheen that chases ships in warm seas. It holds no very bright stars, but it keeps much of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the satellite galaxy visible to the naked eye under southern skies. A short passage bears, on a Madrid plaque, the name of a fish that shines only thousands of kilometers away, in a firmament that never appears here.