Paseo de los Jacintos
Bears the name of the hyacinth within a group of streets in Chamartín’s old workers' colony that, after the Civil War, replaced the names of socialist figures with those of flowers.
The hyacinth is a bulb plant with tight-packed flowers that scents gardens at the start of spring. That flower gives the avenue its name, but not out of botanical whim.
The street belongs to the old workers‘ colony raised in Chamartín de la Rosa between 1921 and 1928, one of the cheap-housing cooperatives driven by the socialist movement. Its streets were then dedicated to figures of socialism: this Paseo de los Jacintos honored the socialist Jaime Vera, and neighboring Alhelíes had been calle Pablo Iglesias.
After the Civil War the cooperative was outlawed and that naming vanished: the names of people were replaced by the names of flowers, a small botanical catalog that covered over the old workers’ dedications. Today the avenue skirts the M-30, far now from the colony that saw it born.