KYQ4: Madrid

Plaza Mayor

Madrid is a city that I have struggled with. Spain's Royal City with its strong connotations with Franco and the Spanish Civil War ruled it out of any visits before his death in 1975 and the establishment of a constitution in 1978. However, the lack of vitamin D as the autumn months served a monotonous regime of dull days made me search for some respite. Everyone else had the same idea the Canaries were booked up. Madrid was cheap, probably because of the Catalan conflict and the arrest of the Catalan government by the Madrid based government. I booked and we arrived at a good hotel in Justicia, a mile or so north of the centre.

The flight to Madrid brought us over the Sierra de Guadarrama, north of Madrid where a massive monument had been erected to the fallen in the civil war. The monument in the Valley of the Fallen includes a basilica, an abbey, a 150-metre high cross on a granite tor and Franco's tomb. The flight passed above it and in the perfectly clear Spanish skies, we observed the empty landscapes that surround it and are avoided by the large majority of the Spanish population as they seek to eliminate the memory of Franco and the devastation of the civil war. I was rereading The Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett, a book that chronicles the reconciliation of Spain in the years after Franco.

Valley of the Fallen

For five days we languished in the museums, parks, plazas, and streets and even managed a day trip to Toledo. It was a great success, with cool sunny days, friendly people, good food and drink and a place that rewards just walking the streets from morning until dusk at 5:30pm. We covered miles without ever having to think hard about what to do next. Stop, have a drink and some tapas, move on to the next attraction, and repeat.

It was helpful having our European Health Insurance cards with our dates of birth, I'm not sure if these will exist post-Brexit, but as older European citizens it gave us either free or reduced entrance fees to the three great museums of Art. We began on the first evening in the Prado, exploring the Velasquez and Goya's. The next day took us to the Musee Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia with its modern art collection including Picasso's Guernica that was attracting crowds of students throughout our visit but we returned to it on three occasions to be mesmerised by Picasso's imagination.

Guernica

In many ways, the most enjoyable museum was the Musee Thyssen Bornemisza. It had an exhibition of Picasso and Lautrec showing the close relationship of the work of the two artists who had captured bohemian life in Paris at the turn of the century. But the whole gallery flowed with its eclectic mix of twentieth-century artists. Particularly striking was Lucien Freud's Last Portrait as we spent a couple of hours in the relaxed ambience of this excellent museum.

Last Portrait by Lucien Freud

As always in large cities, I was captivated by the Plazas. In Madrid, they seemed to follow the design principles recognised by Camillo Sitte in his book The Art of Building Cities, a book that still resonates in my memory forty-odd years since it was part of the core syllabus of a post-graduate course. The height and shape of the buildings, the closure of the space by buildings, the human scale and the diversity of the buildings in both function and design are all components of a successful plaza. The Plazas in Madrid seem to function well with pedestrians milling about at all hours, there are places to sit or stand and observe, civic art, and a palette of materials that traduces the visitor.

Only on a Sunday did things break down when it seemed the whole of Madrid congregated at El Rastro, the flea market. The highlight was the numerous street bands playing with a verve that lifted spirits. None more so than Jingle Django, a street band who gave a rendition of 'I am a Walrus' that brought folk flocking from the crowded street market.

Parque del Buen Retiro, the main civic park, became a regular haunt that we visited on three or four occasions. Superbly designed and maintained it contained all the attractions that a park should have in a major city; it heaved with locals engaging in every activity. Runners, cyclists, skateboarders, wheelchairs and pushchairs, musicians, artists, dog walkers, rowers, scullers, book huts, cafeterias and botanic gardens; it had them all and a joyous atmosphere. We were deeply moved by an installation by Doris Salcedo in the Palacio de Cristal that was in memory of all those who had lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean to a new life in Europe. Their names were displayed in palimpsests on the floor.

I managed a run in the park on Sunday morning and returning to the hotel I had to cross the ring road that had been closed for a major road race between the two great football stadiums: the Bernabeu and the newly opened Estadio Metropolitano. There were 12,000 runners mostly attired in Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid tops. I joined in as a means of crossing the road but enjoyed the bands playing along the route and the camaraderie so much that I joined the throng and ran with them for a mile or so before stepping off at the other side of the road and returning to the hotel. It epitomised Madrid, a city that raises your engagement. It had provided sunshine, friendly locals, wonderful museums, a built environment to enjoy and a history that should be an antidote to oligarchical tendencies everywhere.