Calle Francisco Abril

Barely one hundred and sixty meters in the south of the Retiro district bear the name of Francisco Abril. Who he was is a mystery: no reliable record survives of the reason for this dedication, and the figure does not appear in the biographical registers of illustrious Madrilenians. The calle de Francisco Abril belongs to the Adelfas neighborhood, a sector of southeastern Retiro that was developed as the city grew south, beyond the Atocha railway. In that strip of low houses, workshops and empty lots near the Abroñigal stream, several short streets received names whose reason today leaves scarcely a trace. The neighborhood takes its name from the oleanders, the pink-flowered shrub associated with this land before it was built up. One of its squares recovered in 2018 the old popular name Las Californias, a memory of a Madrid of low houses and industries beside the train tracks.