Plaza del Este

Plaza del Este is a modest rectangle in Almenara, with a few benches and just over a dozen trees, carved from the new fabric raised by the redevelopment of La Ventilla. Recent white buildings surround it. The interesting part is the company it keeps. In this same corner three squares are named after the compass rose: the east one, the Plaza del Oeste and the Plaza del Norte. The south is missing, an absence that throws off anyone walking the three in search of the fourth. No record survives of what reference the east marked: the heart of the district, an axis on the plan, or a simple whim of the street map. Walk the three in a line and you find north, east and west painted on the asphalt, and a south that in Almenara never got its square.