Plaza de Cataluña

The name brings Catalonia to Madrid’s streets, the region in the northeast of the peninsula, washed by the Mediterranean and crossed by the lower Ebro. Plaza de Cataluña opens on the eastern edge of the El Viso district, along the axis of Calle del Príncipe de Vergara, which heading north strings together squares named after territories and republics: the Marqués de Salamanca, this one, and later those of Ecuador, the República Dominicana, and Perú. The contrast with the rest of El Viso is sharp. The district, built in the 1930s, named nearly all its streets after peninsular rivers: Cinca, Segre, Darro, Turia, Nervión, Tormes. In the middle of that river map, the square names a whole region rather than a stream.