Pasaje de Bellas Vistas

Rarely does a narrow alley lend its name to a whole district of almost thirty thousand people. The Pasaje de Bellas Vistas did: this pedestrian stretch between Leñeros and Francos Rodríguez, now closed off by a gate, named the settlement that grew around it and, with it, one of Tetuán’s six neighbourhoods. The name describes what could be seen. These northern lands, old pastures at the city’s edge, stood on high ground, and from here the view opened over the countryside and, on clear days, toward the line of the Guadarrama mountains. No record survives of who chose the name or when. Under the 1911 Cheap Housing Law, modest workers' colonies rose here. A snowfall like the one in January 2021 still whitens the narrow row of façades that once looked out to the horizon.