From Salamanca, our train heads across the wheatfields, farmlands, and dry plains of central Spain toward a pass in the Cordillera Central, the rocky spine of the country. We're quickly into dry, high-desert forestland. On the descent, I get a glance at the famous palace of El Escorial as we pass through forests and villages. On our map, to the south of Madrid, I find the town of Aranjuez and I recall the beautiful strains of Manuel de Falla's "Concierto de Aranjuez." I seriously want to find a way to visit both of these places during our six-day stay in Madrid. But as it turns out, we will visit neither of them. We simply won't have the time.
---------------
Madrid is a world-class city where it's all about the art, and the music. With a population of around 3.5 million and almost another 3 million in the area, Madrid is a large cosmopolitan city with all the offerings you would expect. We arrive at the large Chamartín train station and board the metro for the Antón Martin station. We emerge at street level and roll our bags down Calle de Atocha to our hostel.
We'll be right near the center of things, only a few blocks from the Prado Museum and others. Along the way we pass graffiti and sex shops. Looks like an interesting neighborhood!
The hostel is surprisingly nice and near plenty of good restaurants. We relax for a minute or two in our room before heading out for dinner. Outside our second-floor window, we hear a protest march coming up the street. The protestors are followed by a small army of Policía. The Spanish middle class, workers and professionals, are under stress as prices rise and jobs disappear. We're seen protests all across the country as people speak out after years of terror under the Franco Dictatorship. Posters are taped to store fronts, denouncing pending deals with German banks. The storekeepers don't scrape them off. It remains an interesting time to be in Spain.
---------------
After a short rest, we head toward Plaza de Santa Ana for dinner in fine Spanish style, at an outside cafe. Along the way, we pass music stores, jazz clubs, street musicians, street art, just about everything you'd expect in a great inner-city neighborhood.
---------------
The food at one of the many outdoor cafes is wonderful. And so is the wine. A father is helping his young children navigate through the Plaza; they're dressed in cardboard box costumes and can hardly see where they're going. The smaller one stops to wave at me while I take his picture.
Carolyn buys a necklace from a Somali street vendor with a very pretty smile.
Along one side of the plaza is a garishly-lighted building called The Penthouse. We don't know if it's Larry Flynt's headquarters or what. We find out later it's a popular nightclub. A guy rides through the plaza on a unicycle. I run after him and get a very blurry picture.
---------------
Another night we return this plazam and try another of then many outdoor restaurants.
This is Madrid! Every night is carnival time! Hemingway once wrote, "Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night." We're starting to understand.
---------------
A visit to Madrid has to include the famous 'big three' of museums: the Museo del Prado, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. They're all within a block of each other, and just a few blocks from our hostel.
In the morning we head directly to the Reina Sofía to see what may be Picasso's most famous work: his massive painting of "Guernica." Picasso did this work to commemorate Franco's brutal attack on this Basque village using aircraft from Hitler's forces. It was the centerpiece of the Spanish Republic's exhibition at the Paris World's Fair of 1937.
The work itself is enormous – probably 10 feet tall and 40 feet long – and the room is filled with other people trying to experience it. The scene reminds me of standing behind a crowd straining to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre about 20 years ago.
Picasso's work was often autobiographical, alternating between the joy and drama (and former wives and lovers) of his personal life. In her 1964 book, Life With Picasso, Francoise Gilot says, "… the woman whose large head leans out of the window and whose hand holds a lamp, is clearly based on Marie-Thérése. The rest of the painting, together with its preparatory sketches, is focused about the figure of a weeping woman. And Pablo often told me that for him Dora Maar was essentially 'the weeping woman.'"
The museum has dedicated an entire wing to this painting and the series of studies that Picasso did before attempting it full-size. A dedicated art student could spend a day, a week, a month, going through all the Guernica material on display. It's one of the most important Modern Art exhibitions in the world, and a real coup for the Museo Reina Sofía.
Photography is not permitted in the Guernica area, but are allowed elsewhere. The rest of the building contains numerous galleries, with an impressive collection of Braques, Mirós, Dalís, Gris, and the other superstar artists of the period, along with many excellent but lessor known artists of Spain (Tapiés, Arroyo, Zuloaga, Chillida, etc.).
In addition, the museum mounts challenging displays of some very edgy contemporary works. Among them is the penis-and-polka-dot influenced work of Yayoi Kusama. In interviews she says she's always had a penis fascination(!). She was an important figure in the 1960s New York art scene, and her art is wide-ranging in content and execution. A room filled with one of her hanging electrical works becomes an adventure to explore. She's now in her 80s and still producing the edgiest art in her native Japan.
Among the more interesting exhibits was a display of strong 1930s anti-fascist posters by John Heartfield and others. It was complimented by "A Hard Light, Without Compassion," a photographic study of workers and working conditions from the same era. The two exhibits make a powerful commentary on the times.
It's very easy to spend a day at the Reina Sofía.
---------------
Outside in the plaza as we leave the Museum, a group of skateboarders has a large blue tarp spread on the concrete. As each young 'sidewalk surfer' crosses it a guy lifts a corner of the tarp, curling it over to create "the green room," as surfers call it when they're on a wave deep into the curl and the water tumbles over their heads. They were riding the 'pipeline' in mid-town Madrid. It was way cool. There were a couple of guys filming it.
On our way back to the hostel I got some 'upper body workout' by lifting a building. Hoo boy! That felt good!!
---------------
The next day finds us at the Prado. Of Madrid's three large and famous museums, the Prado is probably the largest. It is undoubtedly the most famous, holding most of the artistic treasures of Spain's rich history. A huge number of the paintings we've all seen in books and magazines are here. You could just reach out and touch them. And get arrested.
The Prado is only a block or so from the Reina Sofía, down broad and shady Paseo del Prado. Statues of Velazquez and Goya greet us along the way. Inside are entire rooms devoted to both of these great artists, and dozens more. To say the place is absolutely filled with priceless works is to state the obvious.
No pictures are allowed in the Prado, but we pass seven or eight 'copyists' in paint-stained tunics and standing at easels, patiently painting exact replicas from the originals. These are not youngsters. They're clearly master painters in their own right, and as I stand there briefly I can tell each brush stroke is filled with intent. Many of Spain's most famous artists through history, including Picasso, learned their craft from the legendary masters by painting copies of their works in much the same manner. I wonder idly how much a 'master copy' by one of these guys costs these days. And I regret not being able to photograph the juxtaposition of the modern copy painter with the centuries-old original. That would have been a good picture!
---------------
Summer evenings fall slowly and gently over Madrid, embracing the city like a lush mantilla. We walk a few blocks to the Barrio de las Letras, where the woods of famous writers are enshrined in the pavement.
We're heading to the Café Central at the Plaza del Angel for a night of jazz with Susana Sheiman and the Ignacio Terraza Trio. We've never heard of them before, but that's because we're not really 'with it,' in a European sense.
We google her later and find out she's been a well known part of the Madrid jazz scene for years. And this city's jazz scene is considered to be among the tops in Europe. I don't know why, but we keep falling into really good stuff whenever we travel. It's very late when we leave and head back to the hostel through the cooling night.
---------------
Another day, another plaza. We will only see a few of the dozens that Madrid has to offer. But one of them has to be the Plaza de la Puerta del Sol.
All across Spain, the young have been taking a stand against the country's powerful elites who want to mortgage their future, and saddle them with debt and unemployment. The Indignados protest in Madrid has been the heart of the movement, and their encampment is in the 'Sol.' In true Spanish style, there's plenty of anguish and anger, mingled with a bit of fiesta. Along with the tents of protestors, public comment signboards, and information desks about the plight of Palestinians, an incongruous Mexican Mariachi band is playing for donations in one area of the plaza.
---------------
A few blocks further on, we enter the Plaza Mayor, the heart of Madrid. It's a sight well worth seeing. But, as rich and imposing as it is, it's just not as impressive as the main plaza we enjoyed most evenings in Salamanca. Few plazas in the world compare to the majesty of the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca.
We relax over a bad pizza (one of the few bad meals we're had on this trip) in the scenic and tiny Plaza de Canalejas and watch the crowds go by. Throughout the center city, buffed young guys are hanging out together. And some women are holding hands. But there's so much going on in Madrid all the time that the big gay and lesbian celebration just blends into the overall scene. There's a Gay Pride march near our hotel while we're there, but we manage to miss it entirely. As we sit there, fiddling with the pizza, a young Madrileña goes by in her finest red dress.
---------------
Madrid's third big 'all-star' museum is the Thyssen-Bornemisza. It houses one of the greatest private collections of art in the world. My first encounter with the name was when visiting the Museo Carmen Thyssen in Málaga. Since then, the name has become very familiar as we see it on almost every escalator we ride in Metro systems through Spain. In Madrid, Carmen had her own wing added to the museum to display her personal collection. I wish I could say it was a magnificent addition to the beautiful old renovated palace of the original museum. Unfortunately, the new wing looks like a cheap hotel from the outside and makes no effort to relate to the older building. That would be fine if it were an important architectural statement in its own right, but it's not. We try to ignore it as we enjoy a wonderful lunch on the terrace among the flowers.
On the inside, again (sigh), no pictures are permitted past the lobby. The walls are hung with astounding art. Think of any famous painter (Hans Holbein to Edward Hopper, Rembrandt to Rothko, Canaletto to Chagall) and you'll find their works here. This museum is an amazing gift to the public from one wealthy family.
Our big regret was not having time to see the (extra charge) exhibit featuring Antonio Lopez. We saw very little of his work (a huge and unsettling child's head in the forecourt, and a massive torso in the lobby), but it only whetted our appetites for more. Apparently he's a very talented and productive artist who works in all media. From what we saw, he may well be 'the next Picasso.' We'll look for him in the future.
---------------
That night – our last in Madrid – finds us enjoying a big bowl of salad in one of Madrid's many sweet little hole-in-the-wall cafés. It was only a block or so from the hostel and we don't even remember its name. Then it's time for a few drinks and jazz at the nearby Cafe Jazz PopulArt.
I order a couple of scotches and the waiter says they don't have any, so I order something else. Before he returns I notice a bottle of J&B on the shelf behind the bar, so I tell him that's scotch. He says it's all just 'whisky' in Madrid. I try to explain the difference between scotch and bourbon, but it's a very busy night and I soon realize how ridiculous the discussion is. So I shut up, sit down, and enjoy my drink. I'm actually an 'ecumenical drinker' and don't really care much one way or the other. Life is good. Don't sweat it.
The band is really hopping. The Canal Street Jazz Band has been a Madrid staple for a very long time. These guys have been doing gigs for about 40 years together. Carolyn finds an article about them in a Madrid magazine. Jim Kashishian (call him 'Kash') was stationed here in the US Air Force, and stayed on after his discharge. The rest are all Spanish, and they all love jazz. What could be better?
---------------
We've had another very good day in Madrid, followed by another fine night. We could find plenty to do here for another week or two. Easy. But it's time to move on again. This time to the fabled city of Barcelona.
Comments