Calle del Pez Volador
The name recalls Volans, the Flying Fish, a southern constellation, within the Estrella neighborhood, whose streets bear names drawn from the night sky.
Behind this unlikely name for a Madrid street lies a constellation. The Flying Fish is Volans, a small cluster of stars in the southern hemisphere, so far south it is never visible from Madrid: it stays hidden below the horizon, near the south celestial pole.
Calle del Pez Volador belongs to the Estrella neighborhood, developed from the 1950s onward. Whoever named its streets chose to look upward: here you find the Pole Star, the Astros and another celestial fish, the Southern Fish. The whole neighborhood works as a star map laid onto the asphalt.
The constellation reached the sky from the southern seas, fixed in the late 16th century by two Dutch navigators who saw fish gliding over the waves, fins spread like wings. To that seafaring image they added stars, beside the Golden Fish.