Paseo de las Delicias
It was named this way because it was a leafy, delightful place for strolling toward the Manzanares, planted in the time of Ferdinand VI.
The name celebrates a simple pleasure: strolling. In the mid-18th century, under Ferdinand VI, a tree-lined promenade was laid out south of the city, extending the Salón del Prado toward the Manzanares. A double row of trees, shade, clean air beyond the walls. People came down to breathe and to idle, and the place was called Las Delicias, “the delights,” for those of the countryside and river it offered to anyone escaping the bustle.
The name nearly disappeared. When another Paseo de las Delicias was opened in the mid-19th century —the one that would become the Castellana— this street was renamed Delicias del Río to avoid confusion. Then came the belt railway, the factories and the Delicias station, and the country idyll turned into a working-class district.
The Paseo de las Delicias today begins at the Plaza del Emperador Carlos V, where the Puerta de Atocha stood until 1851, and ends at the Plaza de Legazpi. Whoever walks it treads, unknowingly, on an 18th-century picnic.