Réal Madrid: Of Madrileños and Marfleeteños
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| Farewell Andalucia, Hello Madrid! |
April 3 – 13, 2022
After the slow pace of Andalucia, it was a bit of a shock to suddenly be thrust back into the hubbub of a big city again. We arrived in Madrid to find the sidewalks jammed and every outdoor café bursting with people. And, as if by magic, the arrival of the Marfleets (Michelle’s brother and sister-in-law, Dene and Kerry), also brought some Australian sunshine to brighten things up.
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| Dene and Kerry also brought Azul, let the games begin! |
We have two lasting impressions of Madrid:
1.
The life of the people of Madrid revolves around
their stomachs. The routine of the day is set by the next meal or snack, be it
a 10am beer and bocadilla, a 2pm long lunch or an after-work tapa, food is
never far away. Dene’s ‘law of Madrid’ was that at any point you are always in
sight of at least three bars or restaurants.
2.
Despite how busy the city seems, Madrileños are
quite chilled out. Whether it’s sitting in traffic as someone randomly walks in
front of the car, or another car pulls across three lanes in front of them, or as
they take time out to wander through one of the many large urban parks, they
are never in a rush. We heard a car horn maybe three times in the 10 days we
were there. And even then it seemed more of a friendly beep than a Toronto ‘get
out of my way bozo the light is about to turn green’.
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| Waiting for a tuk tuk |
To get our bearings we took a tour, and what better way than in a tuk tuk. Wait, are we in Asia? Well, no – these aren’t the trusty two-strokes, these are the electrified version. In fact, many of the vehicles in central Madrid (especially taxis) are electric, making the traffic blissfully quiet, which can be a little tricky as you wander tourist-style down cobblestone streets which you assume are pedestrianised until a car sneaks up behind you. And still they don’t honk…
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| Ceremonial Changing of the Guard at the Royal Palace |
As our guide took us through the old and new parts of Madrid and proudly shared all of the great things the Spanish have done, he would look at us expectantly and say ‘…and of course you know ‘such and such’’. For the first little while we nodded in vague agreement, but finally had to own up that no, we didn’t know any of the famous Spanish writers other than Cervantes, nor many/any of the painters or other artsy types that form such a rich part of Spanish culture and history.
Art for art’s sake
Madrid has a fairly serious passion for art. There are dozens of galleries, but the ‘big three’ are the Prado, the Reina Sofia, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza (say that three times fast).
Of the three our favourite was the Prado. We tackled this
one last, and Al isn’t ashamed to admit that there was a certain amount of dread
associated with this one, due to its mind-boggling size and the sheer volume of
art housed here. But in fact it was incredible, and the best of the three.
Possibly because we have been spending so much time getting to know the history
of Spain, but also because (unlike the Louvre) every single painting has a
paragraph or two explaining the piece, the artist and / or the historical
context. Quite cool to see some of the cities we’ve visited and the events we’ve
read about brought to life in the paintings, and to see Spain’s turbulent
history laid out on the walls. While there were some works by the big hitters (Goya,
Raphael, Rembrandt, a random Picasso!), a large proportion of the works were by
Spanish artists which we only vaguely knew. Just as well we made a hard
deadline to leave after four hours, or Al may still be in there.
The Thyssen art gallery was also good, if simply for the fact
that it’s such a huge collection that was originally private. The founder’s
name was – ready? - Hans Henrik Ágost Gábor, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon
et Impérfalva. I guess they chose a ‘shortened’ version of his name for the
museum so it would fit on the building. Anyway, the Baron was married a whopping
five times (one for each name maybe?), finally settling on a former Miss Spain
for Lucky No. 5, which is the reason his art collection ended up in Spain
rather than somewhere like Switzerland (where he was born), Monaco (where he
was tax resident), the UK (where he had a second declared residency), Germany
(father), England or the US (mother). (Another interesting factoid for the Torontonians:
his second wife was an Anglo-Indian fashion model, who then went on to marry Prince
Sadruddin Aga Khan, who founded the Aga Khan Art Gallery in Toronto).
But, back to the collection. It was arranged in themes,
meaning we often found work by famous artists just planted in the middle of a
stack of others with no real pomp. And there were a few ‘Aha’ moments when you
start to realize that guys like Picasso and Braque weren’t painting in a vacuum
– they were as much influenced as influencing the artists around
them.
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| Known art thief, identified and neutralized before he can make his move |
The third gallery is the Reina Sophia which takes over where
the Prado leaves off at about 1920, and displays art across the 20th
and 21st century. Unfortunately, navigating the gallery is a bit
like trying to interpret a really obscure modern artwork – even though people
keep reassuring you ‘there’s no right or wrong way’, sometimes you still end up
feeling a little lost and dissatisfied. And, in this case it didn’t measure up
to the modern art galleries we’ve seen in Valencia and Málaga (but of course,
your mileage may vary).
Madrid like a Madrileño
Madrileños like a good bargain it seems, as more than one person we spoke to insisted that the huge El Rastro Sunday street market wasn’t to be missed – and it certainly wasn’t just for tourists. It really is the place to be on a Sunday morning, apparently. After a morning of making our way through the sea of people in the market and resisting the urge to buy cool ceramics, vintage clothing, or a giant ring of skeleton keys, we decided a bike ride along the river might make for a nice afternoon.
Like many cities these days, Madrid has a host of different
ways to get around and the old city restrictions on traffic (30km/hr, bike
lanes, emissions control) mean it’s quite appealing to just pick up an electric
scooter or e-bike to buzz around. Sadly, it’s not as easy as that might sound. Hiring
a local city bike made the aforementioned Reina Sophia gallery seem like an
(ahem) walk in the park. We’d already tried and failed to register with the Madrid
city bike service a couple of times before Dene and Kerry’s arrival (almost losing
two credit cards in the process), but Al was determined to find a way. And, after
about 90 minutes of juggling six different electronic devices and several
different credit cards, we had successfully released four bikes from their
slots and we were off and riding.
We spent a great few hours pedalling our way along the shore
of the Mazaneres, where a wide bike lane lined by trees and manicured gardens eventually
led us into the Casa de Campo, a huge (4,000 acre) wild parkland area just west
of the old city which was a hunting ground for kings in the 16th
century. These days it’s just Madrileños hunting down some shade and chilling
out. We laughed and pointed as some young men tried to impress their partners
with their rowing skills on the lake and pondered the use of an area of water
set aside with sports nets suspended 2m above the water. Dene is convinced it’s
kayak polo ,,,,,, and Al is still not sure.
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| Yeah, we don't actually have a photo of the pond in the Campo. Different park, but still... Punters gonna punt |
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| Catching a jazz show in Madrid’s hip quarter with Wax and Boogie |
Semana Santa
People had suggested that we simply must see a procession during the week of Easter in Spain. Most of the local churches bring out one or more of their important icons and parade them around the streets for everyone to see and gasp at, accompanied of course by the local marching band.
Something we’ve noticed in Spain is the very large number of musical instrument stores, musical academies and general music in the air. You often hear people playing or practising an instrument in random apartments and marching bands are part of many celebrations. We’ve become quite fond of the mournful sound of the marching bands’ common Spanish tunes. Not so much a call to war or a jaunty tune so much as a melancholy tribute to things lost.
Luckily it turned out one of Madrid’s more significant processions was from a church less than a block from where we were staying. We’d seen the sum total of about ten people in the street outside the church on any given day so we figured we’d just wander up at the allocated time of 6:30pm and check out the procession. Coming home from a late afternoon rooftop patio cocktail, we arrived to a sea of people crowded around to watch the spectacle. Hmm, apparently it’s a bigger deal than we realised. We eventually found a good vantage spot to watch….well we weren’t really sure what we were watching. A huge crucifix emerged, followed by a lot of people in incredibly tall pointy black hats, some important looking church people, a very important looking book, and then this slowly emerged from the church…..
Rapunzel. Rapunzel….
When we set eyes on the aqueduct we thought we’d seen the coolest thing in town. That was until we saw the castle. Wow – all I can say is wow.
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| We were told that the castle was the inspiration for Disney’s castle. Hmm… we thought it was castle Neuschwanstein in Germany… |
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| Rooves of slate |
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| Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! |
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| "Now sire, we're going to make a statue of you, and you can be holding anything you like. A sword, perhaps, or a scroll...?" "Nah, I wanna be holding a toy castle. A TOY CASTLE I SAY!!" |
Onwards and upwards
After 10 days in Madrid we were just starting to hit our stride,
with ‘our’ local coffee spot, ‘our’ awesome local wine shop and still so much
more to see and do. But we’re not sure you’d ever see everything there is to
see in Madrid (and besides, we need to leave something for next time) so we set
off North into the hills for a quiet few days in the countryside of La Rioja.
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| An Egyptian temple donated by a grateful Egyptian government for the help provided by Spain in saving monuments from Aswan prior to the flooding caused by a dam project... |
