Galería de Vallehermoso

A galería, in Madrid’s street map, is a narrow and almost always minor passage, a name kept for those lesser lanes that never quite became a street in their own right. Galería de Vallehermoso is one of them: it links Calle de Vallehermoso with Plaza del Teniente de Alcalde Pérez Pillado, and from that street it inherits its name with no further mystery. The name Vallehermoso is one of those that grow from below. The residents themselves gave it to this area of northern Chamberí, still open ground in the 19th century, and only later did it become official. It literally describes what could be seen: a valle hermoso, a beautiful valley, open rolling land on the edge of the city. The galería received its official name on 1 January 1931. Barely eighty metres long, in a district that finished being built up when the old cemeteries of San Martín and San Andrés were moved, finally opening up the countryside that named it all.