Calle de Mateo López

Estrella

A street dedicated to a Mateo López whose identity was never documented, one of the few human exceptions in a neighborhood named after the sky.

Almost every nearby street looks to the heavens. A few steps away run Sirio, Estrella Polar, Cruz del Sur, Perseo, Lira, and Piscis, alongside the passages of Can Mayor and Can Menor and the plaza de los Astros. The neighborhood grew on land tied to the insurance company La Estrella, hence the whim of naming its streets after stars and constellations around the middle of the last century. On that celestial map, Mateo López sounds like an intruder. It is one of the few personal names that break the astronomical theme, and no reliable record survives of who he was or why the street was dedicated to him. So the passerby walks its two hundred meters over a human name stranded among stars.