Plaza de Valparaíso

The name crosses the Atlantic and reaches Chamartín. Valparaíso is the port city that faces the Pacific from the center of Chile, built over hills that drop toward the bay in a maze of colored houses, stairways, and old funiculars. In the nineteenth century it was one of the first trading stops for anyone rounding Cape Horn on the way north, and that role earned it the nickname “the jewel of the Pacific.” The square belongs to the Hispanoamérica neighborhood, laid out as Madrid grew northward and conceived as a map of the continent: around it run Veracruz, Cochabamba, Potosí, Plaza de Lima, Plaza del Cuzco, and the Paseo de La Habana. Whoever reads the sign names, without knowing it, a bay more than ten thousand kilometers away, where the funiculars have climbed and descended the hillside since the late nineteenth century.