Pasaje de Áncora
Takes its name from the adjoining Calle de Áncora, so called after an anchor from the old landing stage of the Manzanares Canal or, more likely, after a company that owned this land.
The name points to the Royal Canal of the Manzanares, the project that once meant to link Madrid with the navigable south. Building began in 1770 by private initiative and passed to Charles III in 1779; it started near the Toledo Bridge and dropped through its locks towards Vaciamadrid. From that river landing stage, stranded inland, a rusty anchor is said to have remained, which locals took as a mark of the place.
There is a plainer and probably more accurate explanation: the name would come from a company that owned this land and left its name on it. Naming a street after the owner of the ground was common practice in the southern expansion of the late nineteenth century.
The passage is a short cord hanging off Calle de Áncora and shares its name. It was once called Pasaje del Brasil, in the years when the street map of the Palos de la Frontera neighbourhood mixed naval glories and overseas geographies.