Mario Vargas Llosa
Changing the name of the streets is always a mess. And do it by the brave, as our Mayor, without consulting Tyrians or Trojans, supposes a dangerous folly. It is that names are always linked to feelings. And touch the feelings of the people, their nostalgias, their habits and their prejudices already know that it brings queue. Therefore I prefer the aseptic and abstract identification of streets by numbers or letters, as in much of New York, of San Jose, Costa Rica and other cities referred to thus save rather than foreseeable problems. When name changes are due to political reasons, as happened with Franco’s regime and with other swinging moments of history, the romps of the urban street are ordago and conducive to the madness of the postmen and the subsequent loss of correspondence. Then, of course, modifications in the opposite direction again to produce other entanglements as serious as the first. Fortunately, today, with the mails, the traditional letters almost have passed into history.
Even so, the street names are still more problematic than comfortable for users. I remember once I was cited with Mario Vargas Llosa in Lima and was not the street number. Only an hour later I realised that I was on a road of the same name which sought but located in a different city neighborhood. They already see that the naming of the streets is a matter to take it with a lot of caution. That’s what Julian Lanzarote has not done. Maybe, even, his Gazetteer proposal is better than the existing, but as has been conducted, because Yes, without any explanation and on eve of holiday, that is what the dictionary of the RAE qualifies as alcaldada. And I do not allude to the added costs of signage, stationery, propaganda, the undertakings concerned, because they are obvious. Just me with the free mounted candle and logical discomfort of those who have not been consulted for thinking that the name of the streets should have left in peace.