Túnel de Atocha

The street names what it hides beneath the asphalt: the railway tunnel that stitches Madrid from south to north and joins the Atocha and Chamartín stations. Opened in 1967, it let trains cross the capital from side to side for the first time, instead of dying in terminus stations. It runs under the Paseo del Prado, the Paseo de Recoletos and the Paseo de la Castellana, and the press nicknamed it the “tunnel of laughs” for its likeness to that spinning fairground cylinder. The place name Atocha comes from much earlier. The most accepted explanation ties it to esparto grass: a field of atochas, the tough scrub that grew south of the town, would have given the spot its name. A devout tradition preferred to derive it from the Greek Theotoca, “Mother of God”, to bring it closer to the venerated Virgin of Atocha. Beneath this Arganzuela street, trains still enter and leave the city with barely a sign of it on the surface.