Paseo de la Esperanza
The promenade takes its name from an old pleasure estate called La Esperanza, already gone by the time the area was built up in the late 19th century.
The name comes from a pleasure estate, the Quinta de la Esperanza, that occupied this land before southern Madrid filled with tracks, workshops and chimneys. When the promenade began to be built up, in the late 19th century, nothing of that estate was left standing, but the place-name survived.
The surroundings were then among the harshest in the city. Nearby stood the shantytown of Las Injurias, and the belt railway split the promenade in two, with the Peñuelas station regulating the passage of freight trains. Burying the railway, as part of the Pasillo Verde Ferroviario project, removed that barrier.
The divided route became a wide, tree-lined avenue between the Paseo de las Acacias and the Paseo de Santa María de la Cabeza, today a residential street with no visible sign of its industrial past.