The Relativity of Time

By Richard Morley.

The Buiding of the Comunidad de Madrid with its famous clock.

Here’s one of those logic puzzles:
You are sitting alone in a classroom. The lesson should have started ten minutes ago, but you are the only one there. You arrived on time. You don’t care, because you are still getting paid. Who are you?

Here’s another: You have arranged to meet some friends at a place and time of their choosing. Through good timing you arrived five minutes early. It is now twenty minutes past the agreed time and you are wondering if anyone else is going to come.

The answer to both of those is that you are British, North American, Australian or Kiwi, (Delete as applicable.) and that you live and probably teach English in Madrid.

If you are reading this between 7am and 8pm Madrid time I can almost guarantee that there will be a lone English teacher sitting in some empty classroom.

I can also be quite sure that some time this week I will be waiting for someone long after the agreed time.

Keeping the trains running on time at Atocha Station.

If there is one thing which really highlights the differences between the Anglo and Spanish cultures it is our respective attitudes to time.

To the Anglo an appointed time means what it says. To a Spaniard it means – maybe.
Well, actually it means “Maybe – and a few minutes”. Printed TV schedules should be taken as an estimate. Bus timetables guarantee a bus arriving, “cada 7 to 14 minutos”. It would be a waste of time to be more specific.

There was a time when this annoyed me. But after nearly four years I have become quite resigned to waiting. It is not yet a matter of if you can’t beat them, join them. I still can’t bring myself to be purposely late. To me, that’s just rude. But I no longer feel slighted when my arranged appointment runs late. I just worry that I will now be late for my next one and that will reflect badly on me. That’s my hang-up. My next appointment probably won’t care and would be surprised at my timely arrival.

As Franklin Jones said, “The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it”.

But at any meeting PA, if one existed, I would have to stand up and announce, “My name is Richard and I am a punctuholic”.

Clock Tower in the Plaza Mayor.

I can’t help it. Every week I meet some people for lunch. For our first meeting the agreed time was 1:30pm and they have never arrived before 1:40 (and sometimes later) and yet I am always there at 1:25 or even earlier. I have thought about planning my journey to arrive at 1:40, but then I worry “What would they think of me if I was late”?

Perhaps, as an Englishman, I should blame Shakespeare who wrote, “Better be three hours too soon than one minute too late”. Cervantes would never have written that!

But another Englishman, Evelyn Waugh commented, “Punctuality is the virtue of the bored”. Is my life so boring that I have nothing better to do than arrive promptly for appointments? Do those I am waiting for lead lives that are more interesting?

Well I can’t answer for the second, but there are times when my busy schedule means that I have to bust a gut to organise my day so that I get everywhere when I have promised I would - and then find myself leaning on a lamppost and checking my watch.

Even attempting an answer to the second leads one down the steep path of paranoia.
Is the reason the Spanish are always late is they have something better to do than meet with me? Oscar Wilde had one of his characters comment about another, “He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time”. If I insisted on them arriving on time, and then how would they consider me (?), would I be robbing them of precious time in their own lives?

Stands the clock at ten to three and is there ice-cream still for tea? The Haagen Dazs clock never changes.

Not that they would know it. I know many Spanish that don’t even wear a watch. They even boast of it. Then they badger me for the time because they have to be somewhere! And we both know they’ll get there late.

It is possible to buy a watch in Madrid!!

There is no point on me dwelling on this for long. Nothing will change. Albert Einstein worked it all out a hundred years ago. In 1905 he postulated that a man who travels faster than another will perceive time to move more slowly. As Spain is closer to the equator than northern Europe, it moves faster as it revolves around the earth in the course of a day, so time takes on a more leisurely pace.

I once worked in a country even closer to the equator than Spain. The language of the country was Arabic. If you ever asked for something to be done then the answer was always “Buhkra”, tomorrow. When I queried this, I was told that “Buhkra” was similar in meaning to the Spanish word “Mañana”, but without the sense of urgency! Einstein rules – relatively, as some graffiti author might write.

I am too old to change, but I certainly wouldn’t want to change the Spanish, even if I could. I enjoy two-hour lunch breaks with friends who instead of returning to work on time will take another coffee and be late. It says, “I’d rather be with you”, which is nice!

Sundial at the Puerta de Toledo.

That shows that the Spanish are not “tardy”1, or even “tarde”2, but rather that they allow the time to slip away in ways they find more enjoyable. If the most enjoyable thing in their lives at that time is to be in my company, who am I to complain? I should, and do, feel flattered. For I enjoy the company of my Spanish friends also, and if that makes me late for my next appointment, who cares?

1English word meaning: delayed, behind, overdue, belated, or slow.
2 Spanish word meaning: late.

Do you have an opinion on timekeeping? Feel free to comment below?

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1492 and all that

When I was young and naive – about four years ago – when I was about to make my first, and I thought only, trip to Spain, (My goodness, if I had only known then what I know now!), I downloaded from the internet a street map of Madrid.

I can’t help it. I’m a guy and we like maps. Before I had even climbed aboard the plane for Madrid I knew my way around the city streets and the wonderful metro. The map only lied in one respect. That piece of paper is flat and smooth and Madrid – isn’t.

They say Rome is built on seven hills. I think they lost count when they built Madrid.

But I digress.

So there I was, young (!) and naïve and with zero knowledge of Spain, it’s history and especially its language and staring at this map. In the centre was a Plaza called “Colon”, which I am ashamed to say I mispronounced. I thought, you don’t need to be an explorer to discover this city, but a proctologist!

Well, four years on and older and wiser, well at least more knowledgeable, I know that the plaza Colon celebrates the voyage of Christopher Columbus, or Cristobal Colon as he is called here, and his discovery of a few islands in the Gulf of Mexico. Jeez, if only he had gone a bit further. He might have found something even bigger.

(There is a story told that the ancient Vikings were actually the first to discover America – but had the good sense to keep quiet about it!)

The Plaza Colon is a place where the Spanish gather. It was where thousands followed the advance of the Spanish football team on huge TV screens during last year’s Eurocup and where the victorious team received the accolades of their countrymen on their return. It is where the king takes the salute on Spain’s national day. And it is where many sit on sunny days and take their lunch.

Over these scenes of celebration or mundane munching Cristobel Colon stands high on his column, gazing ever westward, and surveys the traffic passing along the adjacent Paseo de la Castellana. And also keeps an eye on my bank, which just happens to be opposite. Behind him flies what is reputed to be the largest Spanish flag anywhere. The day that I took my photographs was very windy and displayed the flag to its full extent, but normally it sags rather sad and forlorn from it high flagpole.

To the east of the Plaza rests (it is the only word to describe it) a huge block of rendered concrete set in a watery pool on which inscriptions tells of those who went with Columbus and what they did. Unfortunately, this monument is surrounded by the (I hope) temporary offices of the construction company in charge of creating a speedier route between the railway stations of Atocha and Chamartin, ands so is obscured.

The four faces of the base of his column tell the story of his life, but the story of his journey is told much more graphically underground. Because, like most of Madrid it seems, (and there’s a post coming about this very soon), under Madrid lies another Madrid, and under the Plaza Colon is a theatre and arts centre. Named for the prolific Spanish actor, writer and director Férnan Gómez it hosts many of the most celebrated plays in the Spanish language.

The covered pavement outside its entrance, where there is a small plaza under the plaza!, is also home to a few of the sin techos, (without roofs) or the homeless. But I can see there point, because I too took refuge there this week when it rained. And there I found a huge mural depicting Columbus’s voyage. You cannot see it from the street, which is why I am writing about it. One of Madrid’s little surprises!

All the information you could need is there: The dates of embarkation and return; the dates of discovery; and the routes followed by the Pinto, the Niño and the Santa Maria.

Incidentally, if you cross Castellana to the foot of the Torres Colon, you will find one of the most amusing sculptures in the city. I have no idea of its real name, but I call it “Naked Vanity”. My pictures will show why.

So I became a little more educated this week and, of course, I now pronounce the name of the Plaza correctly!

Madrid is not just the Prado - 1

This is the first in an occasional series that will strive to demonstrate that Madrid is more than the three Ps: The Prado, the Palacio Real, and the Plaza Mayor. Madrid is a diverse city, full of hidden delights. Some are large, like the park I describe below, others are more compact. The three Ps are indeed a very integral part of any visitor’s itinerary, but, as you will see, should not be the only places you visit.

El Parque Juan Carlos Primero

If you glance at the Google Earth view of Madrid out to the East, not quite before you get to the airport, there is a curious faint circle, almost like a watermark. They have up-dated the picture now, but when I first saw it I had the impression it was some sort of sewage treatment plant. Zooming down on to the picture just confirmed that impression. Visible water and swathes of concrete dominated.

Then one morning I took the metro out to El Capricho to visit its eponymous park and found it closed. Its gates were locked and its surrounding brick walls obscuring the gardens and the Greek temples I had heard it contains. Curious to see over those walls I followed an ascending rough track until I found myself scuffing along the kerb stones of a busy highway. The never-ending stream of cars was a danger but nothing thwarts me on my intrepid search of the backwaters of this wonderful city and I did get a glimpse of half a Palladian portico, so mission sort of accomplished.

The far side of the highway was fenced by a seeming infinity of chain-link fencing, so I was forced to continue braving the dangers of Madrid traffic until eventually I found a gap in the barrier. In a brief hiatus between convoys I crossed the road, followed a winding pathway up a slight rise until the ground in front of me fell away to a view of a lake.

And what a strange sight that was! It was a stretch or water bounded on all sides by sheer walls of concrete. The path led right to a small grassy knoll or left to a long, narrow bridge. More concrete, trimmed with galvanised steel, predominated.

The bridge took me above the lake. To my left, apparently walking on the water stood four gruesome characters, three large and one quite tiny, from some low budget science fiction movie. A nearby plaque informed me they were a family, a legacy of the blood, based on Eolos, the god of the wind. Of course! What else? I should have realised from the propeller vanes that previously had done service driving some ancient barge that sprouted from their heads. The plaque went on to describe the vanes as representing the Anhk, the cross that symbolised life. The knowledge that these figures, built from recycled parts of antique boats represented rebirth suddenly made everything clear – er – I think.

And before you think that’s weird, you have to see the rest of the park.

I have written about the Parque Juan Carlos Primero before in my post about the holocaust monument. I wrote how moving, how awesome, in the true sense of that word, how downright strange that monument is. Let me tell you now that that monument is probably one of the more conservative, least whimsical, least abstract of the park fixtures.

I have this fantasy in my head that when the powers that be opened these two hundred and twenty-nine hectares of rehabilitated refuse tip as a park in 1992, the sheer immensity of its size defeated all rational thoughts of what to display in it. So nothing, no matter how strange, off the wall or drug fuelled hallucinogenically inspired idea was ignored. Around every corned is something that makes you exclaim, “What the heck is that?”

But I digress. Running through the park is a wide, two kilometre long, S shaped watercourse. Water is definitely the theme here. But there are no grassy banks lined with weeping willows. Instead the channel is bounded by concrete cliffs. And there are low peninsulas of concrete slabs on which idle men sleep while ostensibly fishing. Out in the channel water spouts launch liquid, rainbow refracting arches high into the air.

On one peninsular a tangle of steel slowly reveals itself to be a fallen tree with nesting birds. A rusting rectangular arch frames a view along lines of olives. A broken pyramid topped with the word “NOS” lies beneath a place where virgins are sacrificed.

Well, actually it’s a monument to Madrid’s ties with the Mexico City. It’s a long, rising roadway where an imaginative mind can see a procession of Aztecs leading a young girl to be offered to the gods, at the summit, on a blood red doughnut pierced by the crimson rays of an angry sun god.

Beyond the pyramid a sequence of waterfalls and fountains break the all pervading, severe outlines of rising blocks of sombre concrete. A rippling stream gushes down towards the channel. Above the rise a playground of swings and seesaws and a paved plaza where random water spouts cool shrieking children on hot Madrid afternoons.

Near here you can rent a bicycle to explore the park, buy an ice-cream or picnic. But this is just a respite. There are more wonders to see.

Not the least of which is what I thought could only be the world’s only transparent loo, except there’s another one on the other side of the park. I know the Spanish attitude to personal space and privacy allows for a more intimate nature than that of Northern Europe or North America, but surely there is a limit?

A Loo with a View

We have climbed again. Suddenly from the empty swathes of parkland Modern Madrid is now just a stone’s throw away. Glass clad office blocks gleam in the sun.

Park entrance and the head of Don Juan de Borbón

Below us lays the Glorietta (roundabout/intersection) of his Highness Don Juan de Borbón, King Juan Colos's father, with his craggy head constantly reviewing the parade of traffic entering the city from the M40 motorway. The white roofs of the Feria de Madrid, a place for trade fairs and conventions, lay like a far off sea and before them rests a cantilevered Japanese (to my eyes) temple, but is actually a sculpture of girders that conceptualise a rising arch above the land and manifests liberty and space. At least that’s what it says on its plaque.

Then there’s a white, giant, wriggling worm.

At least it looks like a worm. It depends, literally, on your point of view. As you walk around it slowly a shape devolves. Finally I see a supine figure with something crawling on its belly while another figure leans tenderly over. There is a slight resemblance to teletubbies. This is the “Manolona Opus 397” and represent “in many ways an intertwining in a play of multiple tensions”, whatever that means. But don’t misunderstand my ironic philistinism. I really like this sculpture. It makes me smile.

There’s more water and concrete to our left as we descend past the teletubbies until we find a small copse of trees. Now seriously, this is taking maintenance free gardening to an extreme. The trees are made from rusting metal. In this small grove it is forever autumn, the leaves dully reflecting oxidised sunlight from their shrivelled surfaces.

Then onward and upwards. Past a curving rendition of a home decorating shop’s cards of a thousand shades of paint, a cat’s cradle of a climbing frame for children that looks decidedly lethal and into the woods. Looking back over our shoulders we can see all of Madrid laid out before us; the four high new skyscrapers of the Cuatro Torres looming menacingly or thrusting decisively, depending on your point of view, over the city.

At the top of the hill, to your left, lies the Holocaust Monument, and beyond a series of small, pleasant gardens that seem somewhat incongruous, with their burbling fountains, trickling streams and shady tree lined groves of sanity in the eccentricity of this place. This is the place of delights. It is called the pathways of three cultures. You will find an Arabic garden with broad-leafed, shady palm trees among an oasis of reflecting pools, a Christian garden with its belfry inspired pergolas and a cloister for quite contemplation.

A few more steps and we stand high on the brim of a concrete cliff. Below us the wide water channel drifts to our right. Above us, on a green knoll, a pair of apostrophises converse. We pass through them like a quotation and look down onto the boating lake. Two water spouts shoot high in the air. In summer this is a place of music and coloured fountains. Beyond them a regimented olive grove and on the distance the great red doughnut broods silently waiting for its next victim.

It’s a strange place, the Parque Juan Carlos Primero. It symbolises Madrid’s desire to forge on into the future. It is both separated and part of the city. It excites and pacifies; it surprises and reassures. The swathes of green and terraces of concrete, the real and the artificial, somehow fit together.

I stand by the water’s edge and watch a plane take off from nearby Barajas Airport. There was a time when I would have been keen to be on it. Now I contemplate the ripples on the lake and the new leaves sprouting on the olive trees. I am content.

With 229 hectares of land in total, this is undoubtedly one of Europe's largest parks. Everything here is on a grand scale. The massive olive grove has a diameter of 1km. The avenues that cross the fields are huge. There is even a 2km-long river where you can sail a catamaran. The most impressive feature, however, is the water-show, accompanied by music and lights that takes place at 10:30pm Thu-Sun between June and September in the auditorium. You can take a cute little train ride round the most important sites, depending on the weather, of course. Admission: free. Water-show or catamaran: EUR2.40; train: EUR1.80; catamaran and train: EUR3. Discounts of EUR1.20 for children and senior citizens. The nearest metro is Campo de las Naciones on line 8.

A less pleasant face of Madrid

There’s this scrawny guy who crouches most days in the Calle de Arenal, one of Madrid’s streets thronged with tourists as they move from Sol to the Palacio Real. Apart from looking somewhat emaciated, he seems in reasonable health, in late teens or early twenties, is well dressed and occasionally can be seen smoking a cigarette. Yet all day he crouches, staring at the ground. One leg is bent under him, the other bares the weight of his right arm stretched out with the hand semi clasped like a claw, but open enough to form a cup into which passers-by are silently beseeched to drop a few coins. Unlike the other human statues that seems to plague Madrid; those street “performance artists” dressed as miners, ballerinas, cowboys or caked in mud, who pose unmoving until an impressed observer throws a coin into the provided receptacle, this scrawny young man does nothing, not even a murmured “gracias” for the few céntimos that the sympathetic feel obliged to give him.

On Saturdays, when the shopping crowds throng the Calle de Preciados, a main shopping thoroughfare that connects the Gran Via to the Puerta del Sol and bounded by richly stocked department stores, the pedestrians passage is often blocked by supplicants kneeling and bent like Moslems praying to Mecca. These people moan and cry out for help, often beseeching God’s assistance, but what they really want are the shoppers to throw unwanted change into the cardboard box, cap or a McDonalds paper cup sitting before them on the paving slabs. The sight disgusts a Spanish friend who accuses them of duping the public with their piety and claims they make a small fortune from the compassionate crowd.

When August comes around, Madrid, deserted by vacationing Spaniards, but full of tourists, is full of beggars plying their supposed plight and appeal for alms. It is almost impossible to walk Madrid’s streets without being pestered. Even the diner or person minding his own business in a café is not safe. The beggars approach tables seeking cigarettes or money. To one seeking a cigarette I pointed to a vending machine not five metres away. I received a torrent of abuse for my helpfulness and she moved on to other tables. In another place a man approached me apparently selling lottery tickets. In Spain this is a job given to the blind and disabled, so one is naturally sympathetic, but this one appeared neither blind nor suffering any other handicap. When I told him I did not want a ticket, he quite rudely demanded I gave him money for food. I declined.

Quite frankly, estoy hasta la pelo with these people. I want to walk and sightsee unmolested. I have heard voiced similar complaints about these people from elderly British and American visitors. The beggars can be quite demanding and these people feel threatened. It is not a good memory to take from what is one of the most beautiful and friendly cities in Europe and does not present Madrid, and by extension, Spain, in a good light.

In the Plaza de Callao most days, a small South American woman with severely truncated arms, I presume from being born to a mother who took thalidomide while pregnant, spreads out a blanket on the pavement and in the searing heat of an unforgiving sun, asks for financial help. At the other end of the Calle de Preciados, in Sol, a youngish man with no arms at all holds and rattles a plastic cup in his mouth and appeals for money “para la amor de dios”. And while it is remarkable that he can voice this appeal while holding the increasingly heavy cup between his teeth, he is always well groomed, well nourished, clean and polite, which surely means that, with his appalling handicap, this man has someone who feeds him, dresses him, and cares for him in many ways. So why does he feel the need to appeal to the crowds of Sol for money? So many visitors must go away thinking that rich, resourceful Spain does not care for its less able population.

Yet we know this not to be true. Daily the local news on TV invariably will carry an item of how communities or charities are extending their help to the less well off members of this society. Of course, there are people who slip through the net. Like capital cities across the globe, Madrid has its share of rough sleepers blocking alleys and shop doorways with their makeshift cardboard “homes”. The numbers of poor legal and illegal immigrants are a huge drain on the community’s resources, but I have also been approached, two evenings running, by an obviously absent minded American youth who claimed his passport and wallet had been stolen and he just needed a “couple of euros” for him to use a photo booth so he could get a new passport. Then there was the purported Swiss businessman who claimed he had been mugged and wanted “to borrow” some money for a hotel room!

Although I can’t write this without remembering a band of happily inebriated beggars who used to occupy a few slabs of pavement near Sol metro station and then moved on to Callao. They would huddle on their cardboard surrounded by hand-written signs soliciting financial donations “por cerveza”, “por ron” and “por whisky” (for beer, for rum, and for whisky). They were always laughing and having a joke with the passing crowd. Any tourist amused enough to want to take a photo of this carefree bunch would suddenly see through his view-finder one of the men holding aloft a sign that bore the legend, “Fotos – 2 euros”. Unfortunately, other members of their ilk are not so amicable.

Wherever you look in Madrid, the “honest unemployed” are setting themselves up with an act to appeal for the tourist euro. The city is awash with musicians, performance artists, jugglers and other street entertainers. In several cases it would seem that “talent” is a minimal requirement, but at least they are giving something in return for whatever few coins they receive. But the beggars are just a pain.

This is something the authorities need to address urgently. The beggars seem to operate unmolested by the police, unless a café calls them in specifically. Compared to them I almost prefer the pick-pockets who operate in the Rastro, Madrid’s crowded Sunday street market). Despicable though they are, they do not exploit the good nature of a sympathetic, but ultimately deceived public.

In Training

By Richard Morley.



The down escalator in my local metro station has been out of order recently. In fact I think the down escalator has been living up to its name more than it has been up and working.

In my travels around the city I have seen the inner workings of many moving staircases as the engineers try to fix what seems to be a recurring problem.

It would seem, though I have no real evidence, that those bits of the metro that don’t run on rails are becoming worn out, run down.

This could be serious problem for the passenger. It is not that long ago that Metro Madrid was planning great things to help the weary passenger move quickly through its stations. Many of the interchanges have long walks between lines and this was identified as a bottleneck in the normally super-efficient working of the system. So there were plans to install more escalators and moving walkways.

This was greeted with great acclaim. Millions of people get carried by these mechanical movers every day. A lack of reliability could present a crisis.

My local station came into being in 1976 and is showing signs of age. But to Metro Madrid , this is not a crisis. It is an opportunity.
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The best Metro in the World is now suggesting that all these creature comforts they have been giving us are not good for our health. We are becoming lazy. So, in advertisements in stations across the city we are being exhorted to make use of the metro to – exercise.

That’s right. This has to be the first recorded case of a mass transit system advising its passengers that they would be better off walking.

Take advantage of the Metro to Exercise.

From the time to enter until you leave make your journey more healthy.

Walk down the stair instead of using the escalators.

Walk through the passages instead of using the moving walkways

Of course there is nothing wrong with the trains, just the bits in between. But I suspect this present campaign is no more than a cover up for a lack of maintenance. Or perhaps the high expenditure of the wonderful new rolling stock plus the installation of new monitoring equipment means there’s nothing left to spend on fixing the antique cog wheels and chains that drive the escalators?

And I have to admit I am full of admiration for whoever it was came up with this wheeze. But let’s hope it doesn’t backfire on them. I mean, if we have to walk on the underground, we may as well walk on the surface and save ourselves the fares. Now that would be good exercise!

A more healthy way to use the Metro.

Not that the advertising people the metro uses will be getting much exercise. It’s hard to walk after you have shot yourself in the foot!

Looking for a Home.

“This room has everything you want”, the women said. Her husband, standing in the background nodded in agreement. They were not wrong. There was a fat desk, a hugely oppressive dark walnut wardrobe, a high bookcase with bowed shelves showing years of use, a Lloyd loom wicker chair taking up twice as much space as something more utilitarian and a bedside table that looked as if the mere weight of an alarm clock would cause it to collapse. The latter stood next to the lower half of the narrowest pair of bunk beds I have ever seen. My first thought was that I was to share this room, ¡que horror!, but I was assured that was not the case. So why bunk beds? Yes the room had everything. The amazing thing was that “everything” was contained in a room that measured barely four by two metres.

The room had been advertised on Loquo Madrid and I was now in the business of searching for accommodation. The ascent to its fifth floor location in an elevator that was not sufficiently ample to contain both me and my suitcase together should have given me due warning. But after seeing the room, my fears were well grounded by the twenty meter obstacle course to the (shared) bathroom and the two square metre kitchen with just a two ring hob and a microwave oven that I would have to share with three other tenants.

It is possible to wander the streets looking for those signs advertising “Se Alquilar Piso”, Flat to rent. There are many of these. Some are handwritten, others printed posters where the phone number of the landlords has been felt-tipped in underneath. I have seen apartments worth several hundreds of thousands of Euros advertised on a handwritten, photocopied sheet of paper sticky-taped to lampposts. But you can’t just knock on the door hoping there is someone to show you around and negotiate the price. Things will never be that easy.

And of course there are agents, or inmobiliarios, who always have something wonderful and cheap in their window, which has always “just gone”. But they can certainly help, although their fee adds considerably to the “up front” money.

There are a number of websites that prospective tenants can use to find rented accommodation in Madrid:, Idealista.com, Sublet.com, and Loquo. All contain plenty of properties, but do not guarantee suitability or quality. Beware also of those that do not mention size. After a while it dawned on me that a suitable piece of equipment would have been a cat for swinging. Many would have failed the test.

Beware also those where the owner says he will meet you at the door of the building containing the apartment or room. You will probably find upwards of a dozen people crowded round the door. This is a room with a queue! These people are the Enemy. They are competing with you for that shoebox of privacy, that black hole of clutter. Why do the owners bring such a clamouring hoard to their doors? It is not an auction. Or is it? Should I have slipped the guy showing us the property a secret cincuenta note? Would it have given me an advantage over the poor students who jostled for position at the doorway like piglets at a fat sow. Or were they wiser than me? Did they know tricks I had yet to learn?

Was the girl who viewed first and came out scathingly flapping a disparaging hand claiming it was “muy muy pequeño” trying to discourage us? A couple did wander away. Did she hope to return later and claim her prize? I was not fooled by this subterfuge. I waited my turn. She was right as it happened. It was “muy muy pequeño”, but its associated facilities were ok and its location, a hundred metres from a metro station in a much sought after barrio, were superb. I gave my details as one interested, but I never received a call back.

Look carefully at these people. They are your prospective “house mates”. Ok the two girls in tight clinging dresses might have brightened up sombre mornings as they fought for the bathroom, but the guy in the shirt he had worn for several days in Madrid’s sticky humidity? Hmmm! I think not. Differing tastes in music and the volume at which in is played are minor in comparison.

I am sure the Comunidad de Madrid has housing regulations. Is it legal to rent a room for human habitation that does not contain any windows? Or a window only the skinniest could clamber though set way above head height? There must be rules on cubic metres per person and so on. There must be a limit to how many people can share the same toilet facilities. Does anyone check, I wonder?

And how does Spanish law stand on sexism? Most of the ads on the websites are for chicas. Are men less deserving? Are women less trouble? One site had little pink and blue hearts denoting the sex of the sought for sharer. The pink slides down the page like a rash. But at least it saved the cost of a telephone call. The male recipient of one of my calls made no bones of his preference. “I am only looking for women to share”, he told me. Did he have an ulterior motive, one wonders? He probably wanted someone to do his washing.

The various websites allow you, for a small fee, cleverly collected by SMS messaging, to place a “Wanted” advertisement. For a paltry one euro twenty my ad appeared for three days. This works! Within twenty four hours my inbox was nicely filling up with offers of rooms all over the place. But where were the places? I opened my Michelin map of Madrid, (the best five euros I have ever spent, incidentally!), and checked. A pattern developed. All big cities have less desirable areas, areas not easy reached or not suitable for various reasons, like directly under the flight path of Barajas airport. These were the ones filling my in box. Some were not even on my map, and the Michelin covers a wide area.

“Only fifty minutes by cercanias from Nuevos Minsterios”, one happily admitted. My ad clearly stated “in Madrid”. This must mean different things to other people.

Then there was the lady who intriguingly asked if I wished to share her apartment with her and her three kids! Oh, the possibilities! Was this a property website or a dating agency?

And while on the subject of agencies: You have to pay two month’s rent up front. That’s normal and you get the extra month back at the end of the rental. But the agencies require a further month as their fee. That’s a whole lot of cash to spend for an over priced room. And they are over-priced! The utility closet masquerading as a bedroom at the start of this article was more than five hundred euros a month. The disparaged “muy muy pequeño” was six hundred. One lady of my acquaintance pays six fifty for her single room. That equals the cheapest apartment I have seen advertised. But it’s a renter’s market and maybe the invited crowds around the doorways are the renter’s way of demonstrating that fact. Face it; accommodation will cost an arm and a leg. You don’t need to eat as well.

The main thing I learned was that you can’t find anywhere in August as everyone is away on vacation – and by September first it is too late as the returning students have snapped up all the best places. But there probably isn’t a good time throughout the year. But there are good rooms to be had. Not everything I saw was bad. Some were spacious with bright windows. The smell of fresh paint pervaded in many places and many were indeed reasonably priced, although never cheap.

Mind you, my Spanish had to take dramatic leaps forward as I dealt with prospective landlords. Not just face to face but also on the phone. I made so many calls I had to recharge my prepay phone several times. I forgot simple words and I really mangled the grammar, but I did communicate and that pleases me.

And I did eventually find a room. I am no longer of no fixed abode. I have somewhere for my belongings and I do not have to travel with a suitcase the size of a house. It’s in quite a good area, the room is large with its own facilities and the rent is affordable. Oh yes! The lady who wrote to me turned out to be bastante guapa and the kids are no problem at all.

© Richard Morley 2007 / 2009

Not a Load of Bull

The image of Spain is inextricably linked with that of the bull.

But this post is not a load of bull, it is just the opposite. The streets of Madrid have been invaded with cows. What is the reason for this bovine Cownival, this festival of Vacchanalia? I hear you ask.

Calgary in Canada might have its stampede; Pamplona its mad dash of drunken madness. We in Madrid take things at a far more leisurely pace. After all, El Prado means The Meadow, so what better place for such a cownference.

The cowmunity of Madrid is hosting the Spanish showing of Cow Parade. Spread throughout the city centre are one hundred fibre-glass cows which have been decorated by different artists and designers.

You can download a map that should steer you in the right direction to every cow, although I wouldn’t steak my reputation on it.

Visit the city and feel free to MOOch around the streets. You will find a decorated cow to suit your MOOd. If you feel a little COWardly, don’t go alone, take a COWorker.

The whole herd is one display until the 21st of March. You can see the complete parade here: http://www.cowparademadrid.com/tabid/509/Default.aspx

The cows in my pictures can be found at the Plaza de Colon and around the barrio of Samlamanca.

The Legend of La Alberca

By Richard Morley

At our hotel in La Alberca, Las Villas Abadia de los Templarios, the bell in the clock tower always strikes the hour six minutes early. Recently, while touring the village, which is about a kilometre distant from the hotel, we noticed that the bells in the village church also chimed early. A lady in our party wondered why this was. I told her a much shortened version of this tale:

The story of Maria Esperanza Garcia Garcia.

Maria Esperanza Garcia Garcia was born of dubious parentage in the pueblo of La Alberca, not far from Salamanca in North Western Spain. Why dubious? Well, her mother was an unmarried girl in her mid teens who died while giving birth to the child. Her father was unknown, but as her mother’s brother suddenly disappeared when Maria’s mother began to show signs of the pregnancy, there was speculation that the young child was the result of an incestuous relationship. Hence the repetition of the surname. This would be shocking today, but in the mid eighteen hundreds in rural Spain it caused great revulsion in the small community.

While Maria Esperanza was still a child she was cared for by her widowed grandmother. The supposed scandal of her birth turned the community against the family. Neighbours, previously good friends and even the priest of the parish would have nothing to do with them. The priest even refused to baptise her, but somehow they survived.

Her name, Esperanza, means “Hope”, but what she could hope for in those circumstances was difficult to know. But she was a happy child. In the summer the woods and fields around La Alberca were pleasant places and full of adventures. She would leave home early in the morning and return before dark. Her grandmother had taught her to count and she would always stop to listen when she heard the bells of the Church of our Lady of the Assumption peal the time across the fields. When she heard the bells she never felt afraid.

The area around La Alberca at that time was one of the poorest regions in Spain. A film made within living memory calls it “La Tierra Sin Pan”, or the land without bread. Just a child, Maria Esperanza had no idea of the sacrifices her grandmother had to make to care for her. Often there was just food enough for one, so her grandmother, a woman often in poor health, would none the less make certain the girl’s needs came first.

So it really came as no surprise that shortly after Maria Esperanza´s eleventh birthday, her grandmother died. At a stroke Maria lost her support and home. She moved into a shepherd’s hut just off the mountain track that leads up to the monastery on the Peña de Francia. In summer she lived on apples stolen from neighbouring orchards and in autumn on the chestnuts that grew so plentifully on the mountain slopes. In winter she had very little. She had no friends, no education, and, despite her name, no hope.

When the food was not easily obtainable she would beg in the streets of the town. There were some in who believed in Christian charity and they would secretly slip her the odd peseta. Occasionally someone would pass on a couple of chorizos that were past their best, but most days she would return to her shack hungry and empty handed.

She grew into a pretty young woman, although very thin, and pretty young women have their charms. She soon learned there was money to be made if she waited in the dark narrow streets when the workmen came out of the bars after an evening’s drinking. But in a small town like La Alberca there are no secrets. Now when she came begging in the streets the townsfolk gave her no help. Men treated her like dirt, women spat at her, called her “puta”. On more than one occasion she was bodily carried to the edge of town and told not to come back. The priest condemned her from the pulpit. And one cold, dark night a group of vigilantes set fire to her shack while she was sleeping inside.

She escaped and after spending the cold night trying to keep warm by the heat of her own smouldering home, moved further up the mountain side to a small cold cave.

But her prostitution had brought her more than a few pesetas thrown at her feet by a spent man. At the age of fifteen she was pregnant and in the summer gave birth to a baby girl. Starving and destitute she would sit in the Plaza Mayor, her babe wrapped in a dirty cloth in her arms and beg passers-by for money. People from outside who travelled from Salamanca to buy the jamón that was the town’s main product would throw her a few coins and because not everyone was mean spirited, she managed to survive.

Then one August during the Festival of Our Lady of the Assumption, when the ladies of the town paraded in their finery and there was dancing in the streets, a market and a corrida, a gypsy entered the town looking for work. His hair was lank and dark, his face pitted with smallpox scars, and he had a limp. In the gaiety of the festival he was like an ugly mole on a pretty girl’s face. No one would speak to him.

Except one; A pretty girl with a dirty face and a baby: Maria Esperanza Garcia Garcia. Somehow this odd couple came together against the rejection of the town. She told him of her life and showed him the rotting, charred remains of her burnt shack. Within a month he had rebuilt it and they moved in together.

His hard work on the shack did not go unnoticed. He may have been ugly, and a gitano, but he was strong and soon found labouring work on the surrounding farms. His powerful arms could wield an axe and so, with the end of the year rapidly approaching, he was employed in tree felling and to cart logs into town to fuel winter fires.

His work earned him enough to support himself, Maria and her baby. No longer did she have to beg or sell her body. But memories are long. Her scandalous birth and reputation as a puta still brought her rejection from the townsfolk. But at least now she did not have to face that rejection. While the gypsy worked, she stayed out of the town, kept house and looked after her baby.

Yet the people of La Alberca, rather than rejoice that Maria Esperanza had at last found happiness, now castigated her for living in sin.

For one bright and beautiful year they lived together. The ground around the shack grew vegetables. The gypsy proved to be an artful hunter and so there was rabbit meat on the table, and once an illicit cochinillo. “That sow had so many children”, he told Maria, “she won’t miss one of them”. Maria began to smile more and her baby grew sturdy and fat.

When the autumn leaves began falling from the trees the gypsy was again employed to gather winter fuel for the town. One icy morning his axe slid from the slippery tree bark and the blade severed a foot. Alone in the wood, the gypsy bled to death. Men brought his body to the shack that evening and without a word dug his grave and lowered his body into it. Then they left. The priest did not come to commit the body to the ground and she was left to fill the hole herself. No one came to console Maria. You can’t be a widow if you were not married.

The gypsy had had no money save what he earned. He left Maria nothing except one thing. She was pregnant again.

Following a hard winter and a late spring Maria Esperanza had a baby boy. What crops she had harvested from her garden had long run out. She was hungry and desperate. She could barely produce enough milk for the new born. Forlorn, she returned to her old place in the Plaza Mayor and begged for help.

Now with two illegitimate children and no husband the Christian folk of La Alberca were both repulsed and embarrassed by her presence. They protested to the priest and to the town hall. Many people came to the town to buy the jamón. They did not want a beggar in their midst. It did not present a good image.

Maria Esperanza, belying her name, had run out of hope. Her body was wasting away. Her two children cried with hunger all day. The man she had loved lay buried near his now weed strewn and unkempt vegetable plot. Crying bitter tears she prayed for her children and herself to be released from that hell. But rejected by the church, God did not hear her. And so she decided to take the matter into her own hands.

One evening, just after dark, she bundled her children and walked silently into the town. In the shadows of the Plaza de Iglesia she crossed to the rear door of the church and let herself in. The church was empty and dark. The statue of the virgin high on its mount cast vacant eyes across the gloom. In one corner she could make out the form of the baptismal font that had been denied to both her and her children. Despite it being summer the interior was cold. She shivered and her new son whimpered in the chill air.

Hugging the babies closely to her frail body she silently crossed to the steps that led to the high tower and then climbed the cold stone treads to the top. Through the huge portals that allowed the sound of the bells to carry across the town and the surrounding fields she viewed the rooftops of the village that had rejected her and then glanced down at the hard cobbles of the plaza so far below. She laid a flat palm on the cold metal of the bell and remembered hearing it chime the hours in her childhood. For a fleeting moment a memory of her carefree life as a little girl passed though her mind. It saddened her that her own children would never experience such a time, and for a brief moment emotion battled with reality. She almost turned and left, but a vision of a future as bleak as her past strengthened her resolved. She knew there was no turning back.

She set her oldest child on the floor near the great bell that chimed the hour and removed the wraps from the baby. Despite all the hardships she had suffered, this was the most difficult thing she had ever had to do in her young life. She was still not twenty years old.

She hugged him close, wetted his face with her kisses and then with a cry cast the tiny boy through the arched opening and watched as his fragile body crashed onto the unforgiving stones below. He did not move. Quickly, she turned before her resolve weakened and picked up her beloved daughter. She did not waste time on kisses. If she kissed the child and the child hugged her she knew she could not do it. With one last glance she held the child high – then let her go.

The little girl dropped, slowly turning then smashing against the hard cobbles beside her lifeless brother. Maria Esperanza gazed down in horror at what she had done. She was illegitimate, had been a prostitute, lived with a man out of wedlock and was now a murderess. She would surely go to hell and, she thought, it was no more than she deserved.

It was, of course, her intention to follow her children into the oblivion of the unforgiving stone hard cobbles of the plaza. But the thought of what she had done to her beloved children weakened her. Her legs began to buckle and she leaned against the vast cupola of the great bell for support. She heard voices coming up from the plaza. The bodies of her children had been discovered. She heard the shouts of men, the wails of women, “Oh Dios Mio. Los pobres niños pobres”. Now they worry about my children, she thought. Now it is too late.

Maria straightened, resolved herself for her final act, pushing against the bell for support. It moved. Suddenly there was nothing to push against and Maria began to fall into the void below the bell. Wildly she flailed attempting to grab hold of anything that would stop her fall. The drop inside the tower would kill her just as surely as if she threw herself through the smooth arched portal, but she wanted, in death, to be with her children.

The bell moved first away then swung towards her as it pivoted on its axis. As it rose before her Maria made one last grab when her foot slipped. She fell against the bell, which now swung away, opening a gap wide enough for her to fall through and nothing to hold on to. But as she dropped, a loop in the bell rope appeared before her. She made a wild grab. Held it for a second then slipped, but long enough to pull the loop towards her. Her head went through and the weight of her body pulled the loop tight, like a noose. She fell another two metres before the rope snapped tight. With an audible crack the vertebrae in her neck snapped and mercifully, instantly, Maria Esperanza Garcia Garcia was dead.

The weight of her body pulled on the rope and the bell completed its swing. Sonorously its hammer chimed, then swung back and chimed again and continued to chime until her body was still.

It was six minutes before the hour.

When news of Maria Esperanza’s final act spread beyond the town her treatment by the people of La Alberca was universally condemned. The priest, who had led the persecution against her, was replaced. Those few who had secretly aided the girl now became public to avoid the shame and those who had overtly damned her, roundly castigated. The new priest ordained a Christian burial for Maria, insisting it wasn’t suicide but a terrible accident. And in a spirit of contrition from that time on, the hour was always chimed six minutes early in her memory.

In recent times, to celebrate the new millennium, the church decided to replace the bells. Now a prosperous town and always full of visitors, a new hotel was being built on the outskirts and in a spirit of whimsy the owner decided to include a bell tower in the design. He bought the old bells from the church.

When the new bells were installed in the church the tradition of chiming the hour six minutes early was officially discontinued. An expert from Salamanca reset the mechanism and went home. Yet the next day the bells continued to chime before the hour. And when the old bells were set in the new tower in the hotel, the same thing happened.

And continues to chime six minutes before the hour to this very day. The memory of Maria Esperanza Garcia Garcia lives on. As does her ghost.

© Richard Morley 2009

La Alberca

So, two weeks ago I told you were I was going. Now I shall tell you where I have been.

Approximately four hours weary bus ride west of Madrid lays the little town of La Alberca. Situated at the foot of the Peña de Francia Mountains, it is a town untouched by time – by order of the government.

This was not my first visit to the town. I feel privileged that I have been able to see it in all the seasons of the year. Nestling almost a kilometre above sea-level it can be very hot in summer and with little ultra violet protection is an excellent place to get a tan. In winter be prepared for bitter temperatures and snow. But best of all is the autumn when the trees turn golden and there are chestnuts ready for picking and roasting. I love roast chestnuts!

We stayed in the hotel Villas Abadia de los Templarios. This is a resort hotel with a central building housing reception, the restaurant and the all important bar, surrounded by small, but very comfortable chalet style houses which are where the residents sleep.

The name of the hotel (Abadia means Abbey) is a reference to the Knights Templar, a quasi-military-religious order from the time of the crusades who gave aid to the sick and wounded during the wars in the Holy Land. Some of the order also provided care and lodging along the various routes of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, one of which, La Ruta de Plata, or Silver Route. This runs up through the west of Spain and comes close to La Alberca. There is a slight diversion through the town to enable pilgrims to visit the Madona Negra, or Black Madonna, in the monastery that sits high on the peak of the Peña de Francia.

So why is the town protected by the government? It is a beautiful example of unspoiled medieval architecture. The town is wonderfully preserved. The designation as a site of Historical Importance guarantees this. The houses are of timber frame construction lining delightful narrow cobbled streets. Roofs and balconies sag under the weight of their years, the uneven cobbled lanes could twist many an ankle, walls lean, and stonework shows the erosion of extremes of weather. In winter, swollen by snowmelt, the tiny stream crashes and splashes its way under the stone bridge at the foot of the sloping and very twisting Calle del Puente.

The name, La Alberca, means a watery place. There are many springs and an overflowing stone trough in the Calle de la Fuente Canal is meant to have health giving powers. I heard tell of an old lady who claims to have never drunk anything else. The trough behind the stone cross in the plaza mayor, though, seems to be the main refuelling place of kids playing with water pistols on hot summer nights.

To walk these streets is to return to an age of knights and chivalry, crusades and jousting, but also to poverty and persecution.

This area of Spain was known as “La Tierra sin Pan”, or the Land without Bread. Hidden in a valley not far from the Portuguese border, it was a forgotten place. But in 1933 Luis Buñuel made a short documentary film of the area, which brought it to public attention. Surprisingly, this was something that a visit by the abdicated king, Alfonso XIII and the doctor Gregorio Marañon a few years before, had failed to do.

La Alberca is known for its Jamon. The hams, lomos, (pork loin), and chorizos, (Spanish sausages), for sale in its shops are without question absolutely delicious. The surrounding countryside is full of black pigs happily snorting as they enjoy the bellotas, the slightly longer than usual acorns from the encina tree, (Holm oak), little suspecting what lies in store for them. One very happy pig is allowed to roam the streets of the town. And this is one of my favourite stories:

Casting you mind back to 1492, when Cristobal Colon sailed the ocean blue, you may recall that the “Catholic Kings”, Ferdinand and Isabella, decided that the “convivencia”, the peaceful cohabitation of Catholics, Jews and Muslims, could no longer exist. Moslems and Jews were given three choices: leave the country, face death at the hands of the newly formed Inquisition, or convert to Christianity. Jews with business, families, or who just liked living here, proclaimed their conversion. But there was a catch. Muslims and Jews don’t eat pork, but Christians do. So there was an obvious test to prove the veracity of the conversion. As Marie Antoinette didn’t say, “Let them eat pork!” And to take this one stage further the townsfolk of La Alberca decided that a pig should roam free in the town. If it was found outside your house at nightfall you were meant to take it in for the night, give it supper, provide sleeping arrangements and after a hearty breakfast the next morning you could release it back onto the streets.

Carved into the lintels of several doorways in the town are inscription proclaiming the conversion of the family inside. Invidiously, one doorway’s inscription is thought to show it to be the local offices of the Inquisition.

I don’t know if La Alberca has any remaining Jewish or Muslims residents, but the pig still roams free. It’s not the same pig! A new one is introduced each year and when sufficiently fattened up by the good food and comfortable beds it is put up to be won in a lottery. It’s a very friendly pig, as my photographs show. Ignorance is, very obviously, bliss!

So engrained in the psyche of the town has the pig, and its products, so become that outside the church stands a granite statue of a pig. It is very obviously a boar! Local legend has it that childless couple wanting to conceive a child should give the pig’s, er, equipment a rub. I don’t know if it works.

On August the 15th every year the town comes alive with the sounds of the traditional festival of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, after who the parish church is named. The image of the virgin is placed in the Plaza Mayor and the townsfolk offer their devotions. There are colourful costumes, which have special significance and the day concludes with dancing and traditional music.

The next day the plaza becomes a bullring with a Pamplona style running of the bulls and a corrida.

La Alberca holds a special place in the heart of many Spanish, who come here by the busload throughout the year. In summer the locals must be out-numbered by tourists several times over. I have been there a good dozen times now and still find it fascinating. A tiny place, it should not be missed. Just don’t sit down where the pig wants to be.