Brick apartment blocks and small houses meet the glass office towers of the Castellana, on streets Pedro Almodóvar returned to across his career.
What Tetuán looks like
Plain brick apartment blocks of four to six storeys line streets such as , set behind wide grey paved sidewalks with pedestrian railings and street lamps. The blocks sit on a tight, irregular grid, with narrow blocks and sharp corners rather than a single straight avenue. Balconies, roller shutters and air conditioning units cover most facades.
runs the length of the district as its main commercial street, ground floors given over to butcher shops, bakeries and hardware stores under striped awnings and hand painted signs. Partway along it stands the , a two storey rationalist market hall with an exposed brick facade and a cantilevered concrete marquee, its sawtooth roof lighting more than 250 stalls.
Brick apartment blocks from the 1960s and 1970s, some with balconies stacked the full height of the building, fill the side streets toward Francos Rodríguez. The brick domed church of rises there, with octagonal corner towers and round window openings set into its walls.
At the district's eastern edge, glass and steel office towers rise directly behind the low rooflines, part of the AZCA complex along Paseo de la Castellana. More towers stand over at the district's northern end, above the wide avenue and its Metro interchange.
Shot in Tetuán
Alejandro Amenábar used Torre Picasso, the office tower at , as the 'Life Extension' clinic's highrise in Abre los ojos. Pedro Almodóvar shot a scene from Volver, Irene's confession to her daughter, in the gardens at the corner of Calle de Tenerife and San Raimundo. The gardens sit a few streets from Bravo Murillo.
Volver, 2006
Raimunda and Paula walk this corner of Bravo Murillo toward Sole's house in Volver, after getting off the bus at the nearby Cuatro Caminos roundabout. The corner sits a few streets from Calle de Tenerife, where the production also shot Sole's house exterior and the garden scene.
Low rise terraced and postwar housing sits directly under Canary Wharf's glass towers in Poplar, the same abrupt jump in height Tetuán has at its Castellana edge. Look around Chrisp Street for narrow blocks with towers rising immediately behind them. Poplar's estates are concrete rather than brick, so tighter frames on brickwork hold the match better than wide shots. Try searching housing under glass towers now.
Small low rise houses and workshops sit near the glass residential towers that have gone up along the waterfront in Long Island City, echoing the jump in scale at Tetuán's Castellana edge. The older streets inland from the towers keep the same mixed, modest scale. The towers here cluster along the East River rather than one avenue, so a shot needs the right corner to hold both scales in frame. Try searching low rise streets near towers now.
Elephant and Castle in London, United Kingdom
New residential towers have gone up around Elephant and Castle's older low rise estates and shopping streets, giving a similar contrast in height. The postwar concrete blocks read differently from Tetuán's brick, so this works better in wider shots than close ones. Frame past the concrete textures and toward the street level shopfronts to keep the comparison working.
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