Paseo de La Habana

The name crosses the Atlantic and plants itself in Chamartín: it evokes Havana, capital of Cuba, the city of the bay and the seawall. The paseo de La Habana runs through a part of Madrid where the whole street map looks toward the American continent, hence the district’s own name, Hispanoamérica. Around it are laid streets with the names of capitals and republics across the ocean, like a sentimental chart of the ties between Spain and America. The road is of modern opening, heir to the old Chamartín highway. It runs long from the paseo de la Castellana northward, crossing El Viso, Hispanoamérica, Nueva España, and Castilla. Its surroundings changed from the 1930s on, when well-off families sought here the calm the center no longer gave and raised large houses and small palaces with gardens. Today the avenue mixes those houses with later blocks and keeps a broad layout with the bearing of an avenue.