Madrid Unbound

Madrid is not an easy city to fall in love with. Even Hemingway, a certified Hispanomaniac, wrote in Death in the Afternoon, “I do not believe anyone likes it much when he first goes there.” It lacks Barcelona’s élan, Granada’s ineffable beauty, Salamanca’s intellectual and architectural gravitas, Seville’s spirit, Toledo’s spirituality, and Bilbao’s Guggenheim. And yet when I first went there, thirty-four years ago, I came under its spell. At first I was amused, then intrigued, then fascinated, and then, gradually, almost without realizing it, I became irrevocably and utterly captivated.

I arrived in Madrid in August 1972 to stay with a Spanish friend. His grandmother had a huge, rambling apartment in an old building on the Paseo de la Castellana. Out on the street, the heat was almost unbearable, but inside the shadowy maze of her apartment, with its dusty chandeliers and the heavy shutters and brocade curtains permanently closed, we lived in a twilight zone, where the only sounds were the distant chatter of the maids in the kitchen and the lugubrious ticking of the clock in the library.

At night, we would go out to the Café Gijón for a copita of cool white wine and some chorizo, and sit around in a haze of cigarette smoke, discussing the inevitable but still unimaginable changes that would take place when General Franco, the enduring Fascist despot, finally died. And then, at around two in the morning, we would wander back through the silent, empty streets, and as we approached the building, my friend would clap his hands just loud enough to summon the sereno, who would unlock the massive wrought-iron front door and let us in. As someone who grew up with the Paris événements of 1968, the Vietnam upheaval in America, and the social iconoclasm of London in the ’60s, I remember thinking that Madrid was the most deeply foreign place I had ever been.

I have returned many times since 1972, and with each visit the city feels less foreign, because I have become more familiar with it, of course, but also because it has undergone such a profound transformation. Usually when a place you know and love changes dramatically, you tend to look back with a certain amount of sadness and regret at what has been destroyed in the process.

But Madrid is different, because it has pulled off an extraordinarily delicate balancing act, and has succeeded in becoming a truly twenty-first-century city without sacrificing its past. And when you talk about this past, you are not just discussing the city’s thousand-year history, or its magnificent art treasures, or the bucolic bliss of the Retiro gardens. You are also addressing the more problematic issue of its political and social transition from the Franco era to the democratic present.

Of course, Madrid can be approached in a thousand different ways, but for those who don’t already know it well, there are three emblematic places where you might want to begin—three snapshots that will give some perspective on the evolution of the city. Go see—and it must be in this order—El Escorial, then the Valley of the Fallen, and finally the Reina Sofía National Museum. And then, at the end of a long day, stop by the Café Comercial for a glass—or three—of fino, the bone-dry sherry, and take time to think about what these monuments represent. 

by Gully Wells   

Courtesy of concierge.com