Paseo de la Chopera
Owes its name to the black poplars that grew in these meadows beside the Manzanares, planted when the town laid out tree-lined promenades toward the river.
The name is born from a tree. A chopera is a stand of black poplars, the ones that thrive at the water’s edge, and here, in the meadows that sloped down to the Manzanares, they formed a grove notable enough to name a whole promenade.
Before the houses there was pasture. The area spread over the old Dehesa de la Arganzuela, common land where residents grazed their livestock. In the time of Ferdinand VI, in the mid-18th century, the town government laid out several tree-lined promenades descending toward the river, and the poplars planted along one of them gave the place its mark.
The tree finally gave way to brick and foundries. In 1910 the municipal slaughterhouse began to rise here, a set of neo-Mudéjar pavilions that today, on the Paseo de la Chopera, house the Matadero cultural center. No trace of the original poplars remains. Only the name endures.