Calle Seco

The origin of the name is not documented. No record survives of whether “Seco” recalls a person or a surname, and the street registry lists no known dedication. What does have a memory is the neighborhood. Seco lay in the cluster of low streets the locals called Las Californias, alongside Játiva, Barrilero and El Cafeto, at the southern edge of Retiro. These were small houses and workers' tenements, built on the far side of the rail lines running to Atocha. From that fabric the Las Californias tenement survives, communal housing around a courtyard. Today the street runs a little over two hundred meters between the memory of the tenements and the new blocks that replaced them.