Score one for agile lighting technique.
I finally noticed this, after more than six months of walking around Cuenca: there are places where streetlights poke through overhanging roofs.
Even more oddly, these are mostly the old-style Spanish-colonial tile roofs.
The issue seems to be that the sidewalks, where there are any, are often so narrow that there is no room to mount the lights beyond the roofs' overhangs.
Since there is little room, the light poles had to be poked through existing roofs.