Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

By Richard Morley.
I have written before about Madrid’s wonderful metro, but I can’t let this weekend go past without mentioning it again as Saturday was its ninetieth birthday.

Their Royal Highnesses Alfonso XIII and Juan Carlos with Queen Sofia use the metro.

On the 17th of October 1919 King Alfonso XIII inaugurated the first line. It ran from Sol To Cuatro Caminos through eight stations and cut the travel time from an hour to eight and a half minutes. That first train.

Since then the metro has continued, and continues, to expand in all directions.

This is being celebrated with a small exhibition on display at the Nuevo Ministerios metro station.

It a little smaller than I expected!

The exhibition at Nuevos Ministerios.

Considering that they have advertised the show at every station and they have been trumpeting their 90th anniversary all year, I had hoped for something on a grander scale. Perhaps they are saving the big one for their centenary in 2019.

Half a dozen boards display photographs of the different types of rolling stock that has been used through the decades, ancient photographs of early construction work, pictures of the metro in use and advertisements through the ages. There are a couple of ancient ticket dispensing machines and a cut away model of Gran Via station. Well the model is named the station of Red de San Luis, but then its name was changed to José Antonio before eventually taking the name Gran Via. But then Gran Via itself wasn’t called Gran Via until relatively recently, so that’s understandable. There are some interesting pictures of early tunnelling. Since the 1960s Madrid has used the “Madrid Method” for tunnel excavation. This is a system that utilises steel and concrete to shore up the surface while men dug out the underlying soil by hand or machine. Madrid stands on a mixture of sand, gypsum and clay, which is known locally as “Peñuela” and is relatively easy to extract.

In more recent years huge Tunnel Boring Machines have done the work that used to be done by man and donkey. When work began in 1917 the system was identical to that used by the mining industry. On some of the lines today, particularly lines 1 and 2, the bare rock walls can be seen as you pass through. Where the natural rock was not strong enough the walls were lined with brick. "Mining" the Metro at the Glorietta of Bilbao.

That first line was just 3.48 kilometres long. Today the system comprised of 284 kilometres of track and the number of stations has increased to 294. However, if I have my sums correct, the cost of today’s ticket is 1113 times more than the cost of a ticket in 1919! However, even if you buy your tickets singly, it only cost one euro to travel on three quarters of the network, with only a further euro supplement to get you to Madrid’s furthest extremes.

Then and Now.

As well as having its own eponymous construction technique, the Madrid metro has been one of the most innovative public transport systems anywhere in the world. It holds many patents for building and control systems. It uses some of the most modern rolling stock in the world, which it is constantly up-dating. For those reading this and are now muttering, “Not on my line, they haven’t”, I can only say that they will.

Madrid metro does have some old sections which were built with a much smaller tunnel size than that used on the newer lines. This, of course, restricts it, without major reconstruction, to what it can do. That major reconstruction, as well as some pretty intensive modernisation, is planned.

With an announced investment of 2,976 million Euros intended for new lines and refurbishment of old stations, I would imagine that when the Metro celebrates its centenary, we will have seen some radical changes.

And they might be able to afford a better exhibition.

The photo just above is the entrance to a much used Metro station. It has since been remodled. Much kudos, and perhaps a beer, to anyone who can tell me where it is.

What do you think of Madrid metro? Comments please.

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Power to the people

By Richard Morley.Powerhouse of the old weaving factory, Atocha.

One of the questions that cropped up recently on the search engines which send internauts towards this blog was, “What did Spain do in the Industrial Revolution?” And the answer to this, at least to an Englishman who was brought up to regard the likes of Watt, Stephenson, Arkwright, Trevithick, Boulton, and McAdam as national heroes just as much as Drake, Nelson, and Churchill, is Not A Lot. Such a great leap forward in technology requires a spirit of entrepreneurial endeavour and public acceptance that was either lacking or discouraged in Spain at that time.

Much of Spanish manufacturing was rigidly controlled. Usually by the royal household who had a monopoly on many of the processes and balked at the very idea of competition.

This is not to say that Spain had no industry. Far from it; such a sizable and important country with possessions and colonies abroad had need of a diverse and powerful infrastructure. What it lacked was innovation.

While researching the question, at least as far as Madrid went, I was struck by the great lack of records available. In fact, what I have found have been bureaucratic accounts relating to the tariffs and taxes imposed on traders, importers and manufacturers rather than records of inventions or scientific development. In fact it seems much of Spain’s industrial advances used imported technology as opposed to any home grown know-how.

The first thing you notice when visiting the railway museum in the Paseo de las Delicias is a British built locomotive and in the lobby of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales stands one of Watt’s steam engines.

However, before I get comments about how Spanish ingenuity invented the submarine and the mop and probably many other things, compared to Britain at that time most of mainline Europe depended more on an agrarian economy than an industrialised one.

According to industrial historians the one thing that points towards industrialisation is the use of fossil fuels: Coal and oil. While the coal mines of Britain were supplying the powerhouses of increasingly large factories, the industries of Madrid were still fuelling their fires with charcoal and firewood.

How do I know this? Through the official records of the time! All fuel entering Madrid was taxed and one thing the funcionarios of Madrid were good at was keeping records. So I know that in the mid 1800s Madrid imported approximately 36,000 tons of charcoal a year, which worked out at less than half a kilogram of fuel per resident per day, a figure that basically hadn’t changed for a hundred years. Also 16,000 tons of firewood was entering the city at that time. There is no mention of any coal. When Enrique Dolfus established his cotton factory in San Fernando de Henares the steam engine that supplied the power to the looms was fuelled by 29,000 arrobas of firewood a year. An Arroba is 25 pounds or about 12 Kg. (San Fernando de Henares is outside of the city and so this does not figure in the records.)

There was no heavy industry at this time. Large scale metalwork was produced out of the city, but Madrid did have many blacksmiths, tinsmiths, gold and silversmiths who needed fuel for their furnaces. And of course, there were the bakers, the tripe makers, pottery, glass, tile and brick makers who had to heat their ovens and kilns.

The documents show that charcoal was the main fuel used for domestic use. But it seems that there are different forms of charcoal and different industries demanded very specific fuels. As an example, charcoal made from heather was used almost exclusively by the metal industries as, being a very hard wood, produced the greatest heat. Seven hundred and eighty cartloads and smaller quantities carried by mules and donkeys entered Madrid in 1848.

One of the most intriguing types of charcoal was called “Errax” and was made from olive stones. It was only used for use in domestic heating in the houses of the wealthy and never really caught on.

But charcoal was much more expensive than untreated firewood and that was used by many. A special type of firewood, known as “Hornija”, was ideal for bread baking. However, its heat output was not as high as charcoal and when the pottery in Alcorcón began to use it in the kilns it was found that the wood of the broom they were using did not give sufficient heat to vitrify the lead glaze. This had fatal consequences when the pottery came into contact with vinegar and other foodstuffs.

The saltpetre factory in Embajadores used firewood from grape vines and the tanneries would use oak. The earthenware factory in Valledemorillo only wanted pine.

But there was one fuel that was cheaper than all the others. Known as Madrid Peat, “Turba de Madrid”, this was actually animal manure that was mixed with straw and allowed to dry in dung heaps. It was calculated from the forage / manure conversion tables (and I amazed that there are such a things!), which determine how much mierda is produced by how much food, the 230,000 fanegas* of barley and nearly two million arrobas of straw would produce nearly eight thousand tons of manure. Apparently this represented 14% of all the fuel used in Madrid. While much of this was used in the kilns of the brick makers, it was a very cheap fuel for the bakers. Noting that baker’s ovens usually put both fuel and product in the same cavity, as the cooks of cordero (milk fed lamb) do today, I do wonder what the bread tasted of.

*A “Fanega” is a dry measure equivalent to about one and a half bushels or 50Kg. It is also the name of my favourite restaurant in Madrid. Find it at C / General Oráa, 29.

“Madrid Peat” was obviously in very plentiful supply, but its accumulation was discouraged due to fire risk. This did not prevent a large fire breaking out in Santa Domingo Plaza.

Genuine peat, gathered from marshy areas outside the city, was used by the lime makers and also by the confectioners. By law only tanners were allowed to use horn to feed their fires, but this was a readily available commodity from the meat markets in the Rastro and tripe makers would use it to start their fires.

This use of wood had a devastating effect on the surrounding forests. In a defence of “uncooked soap”, (apparently there are two ways of making the stuff – one needs heat, the other, considered inferior, didn’t,) Francisco Cabarrús, a French businessman whose Spanish father-in-law owned a soap factory in Carabanchel, claimed that the traditional method was responsible for the “great shortage of firewood at the Court and throughout the kingdom: it would not be exaggerated to say that the boilers in the villages around Madrid use around 400,000 arrobas of firewood per year, and if the “uncooked soap” is prohibited the scarcity will increase and the time may come when the forests are completely destroyed”.

You don't have to go too far out of Madrid, particularly if you head towards Segovia through the summer trekking and winter skiing resort of Puerto de Navacerrada and over the Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains before you see great swathes of forestry, so perhaps Cabarrús overstated the case, but we are very aware these days about deforestation so perhaps, even for motives of self-interest, he could be regarded as one of the first conservationists.

It was not really until the beginning of the railway in Spain that coal was really required. This is strange as Spain has huge reserves of the stuff, although it is difficult and expensive to mine. Much of the coal used in power stations in Spain is imported.

But why was Spain left behind in the Industrial revolution? According to Leandro Prados de la Escosura, in a paper on Growth and Poverty in Spain, the indicative movement of the population from agriculture and villages to industry and towns did not really begin in Spain until the beginning of the twentieth century.

In his book, “An Economic History of Modern Spain”, Joseph Harrison suggests that the problem with Spanish industry in the 1800s was one of money supply. He states that, “…Spain’s inability to build a sound industrial base must be placed with successive governments who pursued a variety of mistaken and counter-productive policies which proved highly detrimental to the private sector”.

Quite true. It seemed the state could raise money from the banks, which they owned, for any number of schemes, but business entrepreneurs went begging. From 1852 to 1873 the bank of Spain lent twenty million pesetas to private companies, but eighty-two million stagnated in government loans.

While London and Amsterdam were seen as trading cities, Madrid was the model for the political city. Like Imperial Rome, Madrid was described as an economic parasite, consuming the wealth of the nation and its empire without contributing to that wealth. From Madrid ran a political and administrative network that controlled, taxed and shaped commercial activity, but its location, well inland and away from the trading ports, kept it from developing commerce of its own.

When you consider the centre of worldwide trade that Madrid has become today, this history seems very strange, but, with the exceptions of industries under royal patronage, the tobacco and weaving companies, private enterprise was almost discouraged by the government of the day.

But not all the blame can be laid on the government. A report in the London Standard of March 14, 1885, tells how cigar rollers in Madrid revolted over the introduction of machinery into the factories. It seems the populace, like the Luddites of Britain’s own Industrial Revolution, did not welcome the age of mechanisation.

So the answer to what Spain did during the Industrial Revolution is indeed, Not A Lot. However, if someone in a hundred years time asks what Spain did during the Technological Revolution that is happening now, then the answer will be very different.

Spanish companies are at the forefront of technology today. Telefónica takes its expertise all around the world. The Madrid Metro is an example to public transport systems the world over, holding patents that earn huge revenues and just about everyone I know works in the computer of engineering sectors.

The question should not be, “What did Spain do in the Industrial Revolution?” but, What is Spain doing now?

The question of which source of power should drive our world is important today. Should it be wind, water, sun, coal or uranium fired? Or should we return to animal waste? Leave a comment below.

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A Mess Of .... Miércoles

By Richard Morley

I have always thought Madrid to be a clean town. There seems to a huge green jacketed army going around after us picking up our unwanted unsavoury waste. Our bins are emptied in the small hours of the morning by ruthlessly efficient, although noisy, bin men who are followed in turn by a team armed with high pressure hoses who wash the streets and clean the rubbish bins on every lamppost.

Watching the Cabalgada de los Reyes Magos, or the parade of the three kings, which among other things has riders on horseback, I was amused to see that directly behind the horses were three street cleaners, pushing their barrows, ready to sweep up any droppings the horses left behind them. I was amused, but not surprised. With a hoard of marchers on foot bringing up the rear this was a very sensible action to take. Evidence once again that Madrid takes having clean streets seriously – and a good reminder to the crowd.

Before the Puerta del Sol took on the appearance of a perpetual building site, I once watched three protest demonstrations in a row. Each group handed out immediately discarded flyers and left a pile of detritus. But between each demo the street cleaners moved in, leaving a pristine plaza for the next group to desecrate. Within minutes of the last demonstration, all the rubbish was gone.

The same thing happens at the New Year celebrations that also take place in Sol. With tens of thousands of revellers drinking canned beer or bottles of cava and discarding cigarette ends, hamburger cartons, drinking cups etc, the authorities estimated the street cleaners removed twenty-seven tons of rubbish last year. By sunrise on New Year’s Day it was all gone!

A mole on the inside of the Ayuntamiento tells me that a street cleaner’s job is one of the most sought after in the city. I don’t suppose the pay is marvellous or the hours very sociable, but it’s a service the community needs and so guarantees pretty much constant employment. And they seem to have every mechanical aid they need at their disposal.

So what can be swept or washed away never stays around for long.

Other blots on our city’s landscape are a little more permanent.

I have written before about graffiti. Then I was praising those that can do it well.

Unfortunately the truly gifted are in the minority.

From time to time my own apartment block has come under attack from the spray paint fraternity. But no nimbyism here – I think everyone’s backyard should be free from this defacement. On Monday I visited one of Madrid’s least beautiful areas. It was a bleak residential area where efforts to provide a small park and play area had been completely violated by this obscene insanity. What should have been a small haven of peace and beauty had been completely despoiled. Surrounding walls had been covered with nonsensical scrawls, names, insults, and vulgarities, and although there were some that had been painted by someone with a modicum of talent, the content of the work made me feel threatened. I suppose it did not help that the only people in this tiny park, given to the community to provide fun for children and rest to the elderly, were five young men who were encouraging two dogs to fight each other. I will have to visit this street on a regular basis from now on. I will not feel comfortable.

Quite rightly the authorities consider graffiti an act of vandalism; an act that costs the city dear to clean it up. This is reflected in the size of fines given to those actually caught in the act: from a derisory €300 to a more substantial €6000.

That last figure is a sizable sum. I doubt if many of the untalented youth who leave our walls disfigured with their childish squiggles could afford to pay it. So the Ayuntamiento have come up with an alternative: Clean up your own mess.

So from now on, anyone foolish enough to be caught in the act will be asked to remove it and any other “street art” in the neighbourhood. I am not sure whether they are “fined” a particular number of hours of work or square metres of wall space. I would think ten times the area of the wall you are found to be defacing would be sufficient. Already eight youths, aged between 16 and 20, have begun work. “We want to make them wake up to the damage they do”, said Ana Botella, the Ayuntamiento’s environment delegate. I do hope they see the error of their ways.

Included in this programme are young people caught in the antisocial crime, (according to authority), of engaging in a “Botellón”. I witnessed this heinous crime in action a few weeks ago. A few dozen youths spread themselves and sprawled across the Plaza dos de Mayo and wilfully drank Calimochó, a mixture of red wine and Coca-Cola, which they can buy for a couple of euros a litre. Like most teenagers they looked rather sullen. In a corner of the plaza a small squad of policemen with a couple of cars and an unmarked van stood watch over the listless bunch.
“A bit of an overkill”, I remarked to an English friend as we walked past.
“I don’t know”, he remarked. “They ought to arrest that guitar player for offending good taste”.
Other than that, these “criminals” seemed to have far to much lassitude to actually do something antisocial.

Not that that is unknown. Less than a month ago, in the western suburb of Pozuelo, a Botellón did get out of hand and serious crimes were committed. Local residents blamed it on the drinking, but I have heard that something more than a sad evening of consuming cheap alcohol had been organised by someone with an axe to grind. Fortunately this does not happen often.

But I also plead guilty to this crime, I have to admit to taking part in a “Botellón myself. I swear I was the oldest there by thirty years. I was in La Latina and saw this crowd of youths when one of them shouted my name. He had been at one of the English Villages I attend and came out of the crowd to offer me some Spanish hospitality. He thrust a plastic coke bottle in my hand. “Calimocho”, he explained. “Have a drink.” Cheap wine and generic coke; yes it tasted as you would imagine.

But it’s not their drinking habits the Ayuntamiento find troublesome, although the act of drinking in the street IS illegal, but the discarded plastic and smashed broken bottles they leave behind them. They too, if caught, can now be fined a tidy sum, or be sentenced to tidy. I wonder if we can expect to see orange suited youths chain-ganged together, brooms and scrubbing brushes held at the ready.

“Quite right too”, would say the tax payers of Madrid, who have recently received increased demands from the city council to pay for refuse collection. The new tax is seen as unfair as it is based on the size of the property and not on the number of waste producing residents.

Elisha Bartholomew, who lives with his wife in Vallecas, is retired on a pension of €900 a month and claims he produces no waste except for some potato peeling and newspapers. His “garbage tax” is €112. But neighbour Lucas Garcia has four residents in his house and will only pay €94. He says, “It’s very unfair. Gallardón (The mayor of Madrid) has spent a fortune on the M30 (The Madrid ring-road) and the attempt to get the Olympic Games and we have to pay.”

Now, the newspaper report I culled that from did not say if either family had a dog, but if they did they should be held responsible for their share of the mierda de perro that fouls the streets of Madrid all the time.

Near where I live there is a small, sandy area designated for dogs to come and do what is necessary. The Ayuntamiento has provided a bin that also dispenses free plastic bags to assist the owners clean up after their pets. There are signs on every lamp post informing them of this little bit of civic behaviour. And do they? Do they heck! The area is a minefield where you would indeed be foolish to rush in where even angels would fear to tread. I have seen a motorcycle equipped with a vacuum cleaner that dashes about the streets collecting these doggy mementos.

It is a legal requirement to pick up after your animals. There’s a fine of €200 if you do not. But it would seem there’s one law for us and one law for the police. The streets of Lavapies, a barrio in south central Madrid full of narrow twisting lanes, are patrolled by police on horseback. Well horses are animal too and the residents are complaining about the splatters of poop that present a far great challenge to avoid that what the dogs leave behind. Worse, it’s somewhat more liquid and squirts up in smelly jets if a car drives over it. “The law should be equal for all”, commented one resident, remarking he had never seen a cop dismount and clean up after his horse.

Quite right too!

Author's note: Miércoles means Wednesday, but is also used as a humerous euphemism for excrement. It's Wednesday, I am writing about it - and it amused me.

What do you think should be a suitable punishment for the spray paint despoilers? Should the punishment fit the crime? Comments please.

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A Night At The Opera

By Richard Morley.

I have friends with connections. One of them phoned me and said she had two tickets for the opera and would I like to go?

How many times have I walked down the Calle de Arenal, through the Plaza de Isabel Segundo and been faced with a choice of routes to get to the Plaza Oriente and the Royal Palace? The building forcing me to make that choice is the Madrid Opera house, or properly, El Teatro Real. Built in the shape of a coffin the Teatro Real looms over the plaza Isabel Segundo like a tsunami about to break. From the outside it is not a pretty building.

I had been told that inside it was a different matter. That since its refurbishment in 1997 it was a beautiful place. I wouldn’t know. With opera tickets being the price they are, the only chance I was going to have to see the inside was on the White Night, La Noche en Blanco when, together with other places of culture, the Teatro Real opens its door to the hoi polloi so they can get a look for free. The queues for that usually snake around the Plaza Oriente for hours. I hate queuing, so I thought I would never get the chance.

And then my friend phoned me.

The Teatro Real was opened by Queen Isabel II in 1850 following thirty two years of construction. It had not been an easy building to erect. A theatre must of necessity be large and high. In keeping with the Royal Palace, which it faces, and the expectations of its patrons, who were the elite of Madrid society, it also had to be a grand edifice using heavy stone. But there is a reason why the street that runs from Sol to the opera house is called the “Calle del Arenal”. It was Madrid’s main source of sand for building and the bible tells us not to build our houses on sand. There were problems.

However, in 1850, Queen Isabel attended the opening performance of “La Favorita” by Donizetti and in the decades that followed its reputation as one of the major opera houses of Europe was solidified.

In 1897 one opera goer wrote, “The luxurious decoration of the room, with warm red and gilded tones, shone with light. In the boxes, white shoulders and bosoms, splendid dresses, jewels, muslin shawls. Diamonds shone, fans waved, bald pates shone like marble”. It is curious the author did not actually comment on the performance those bald heads and white bosoms had come to see.

I think I might know why.

Opera in Madrid has had a hard time. It is said that the Teatro is haunted by the ghost of a singer who had failed an audition! Likewise, the Teatro Real’s existence has been haunted by conflicting tastes in culture and politics.

The 1924-25 season ended with “La Boheme”. No more operas were performed until 1997. Why? I refer to my previous mention of the sand the theatre was built on. Deep cracks had begun to form in the building due to its unstable foundation and the place was closed. Shortly after, the building caught fire. It became a ruin. During the Civil War it was used as a munitions dump and was further damaged by an explosion.

In the mid sixties there was an attempt to reopen it as a music hall. Franco has forbidden the performance of opera, which he considered to be decadent. This was hardly encouraging to Spanish opera singers like Montserrat Caballe, Victoria de los Angeles and Alfredo Kraus, who were then becoming famous on the international stage.

After the dictator’s death it was decided to rescue the Teatro and there were hopes that it would reopen in 1992. Like the phantom of the opera mentioned above, the theatre failed its audition. The government had chosen José Manuel Gonzalez to carry out the restoration. He had been in charge of the necessary repairs when it became a music hall and had ignored Franco’s instructions to destroy the stage so that opera would never be performed again. But soon after work began Señor Gonzalez died of a heart attack while showing journalists around the site.

However, in 1997 the opera house reopened. The first opera was meant to be Parsifal. It’s beautiful music, but hardly the stuff of what should be a happy occasion. Besides, it was thought that five hours of opera might not please the King, who unlike his wife, is not known to be a great fan of the art form. So one of the first duties of the new Minister of Culture, Esperanza Aguirre, was to decree that the opening performance should be of Manuel de Falla’s opera ''La Vida Breve'', which as well as being a good Spanish work was a lot shorter than Parsifal.

Last Wednesday I sympathised with the King.

Since then there has been a lot of discussion, and xenophobic comment, regarding the nature of performances at the Teatro. After all, Spain does have its own home grown opera in the Zarzuela. And they tend to be happy, entertaining works which the public would enjoy.

I know I would.

But Opera is regarded by some as “High Art”, which can leave us poor uncultivated wretches a little lost – and bored.

The performance I went to see was “Lulu” by Alban Berg. Berg was an Austrain composer and shared with Schoenberg a love of the “twelve tone” technique, which meant we were not going to leave the performance with something to hum on the way home.
Let me state I am no musical Philistine. I was brought up in a musical family and play several instruments (with differing degrees of expertise) and have always loved music and in particular the classics. But I do like a good tune!

There are no tunes in “Lulu”.

My musical ear enjoyed the sounds of the orchestra and the quality of the singers could hardly be surpassed, but the story of a heartless hussy who goes through three husbands in a life that passes from poverty through riches to degradation is not a happy one. But neither is La Boheme, and that’s got some wonderful tunes.

This four hour, (yes, really!) opera has recently been performed at The Royal Opera house in London’s Covent Garden. Here is a quote from London’s Daily Telegraph: “Some directors have sought to soften its edges with comedy or lard it with visual glamour, but Christof Loy's new production rigorously refuses any such sentimental concession or moral compromise: his interpretation is bleak, raw and ice-cold.”

And London’s Guardian Newspaper: “Christof Loy's mind-numbingly tedious staging of Berg's Lulu achieves the impossible - it allows Berg's masterpiece to come across as a turgid and overlong evening of musical endurance.”

And I would say they just about hit the nail on the head!

So, did I have a good evening? Well, yes I did. Despite the reviews above I did actually enjoy the story – if not the telling. But I really had to put my brain to work. The libretto is in German, but above the stage – far too far above so I was like a nodding donkey all evening – was a screen with Spanish subtitles, which I then translated into English. I would like to thank Gloria Nogué, who the program tells me was responsible for those subtitles, for making it so easy. She just about hit my level of Spanish!

Our tickets were for the VIP section, which meant we had much the same view as the King and The Queen, should they have been willing to endure the performance. It gave me a great view of the great horseshoe shaped auditorium with its wonderfully restored gilt boxes and a great view of the stage, which is huge. This wasn’t actually filled with much and the simple set with much left to our imagination and the choreography basically consisted of the cast ambling round or standing still.

Our VIP tickets gained us entry to the Goya room during the two intervals. They also meant that our refreshments, white wine for me, cava for my companion, and delicious canapés, were complementary. It’s nice to see how the other half live once in a while.

From next year the Teatro Real has a new director, Gerard Mortier. He is quoted as saying, “I aim to fascinate the public. One of the first things I’ve noticed about Madrid is that the Opera House faces the Royal Palace and has its back to the city. I hope to keep the theatre facing the palace but for it also to embrace the city and bring in the people”.

He said he also hoped to attract younger people to the opera and to emulate what he called the Paris Opera's feat of bringing down the average age of opera-goers from 58 to 42.

Ok, it’s not that long a walk from La Latina to the Teatro Real, but he will need to stage something much more entertaining than “Lulu” and try to reduce the normally ridiculously high prices for tickets. I hope he succeeds. It was a great experience, but next time I want to be entertained.

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It's Turned Out Nice Again!

By Richard Morley
Sunny skies over Madrid's Main Mosque.

Well I am sorry to inform the Schadenfreude of some, but once La Noche En Blanco was out of the way the weather turned nice again. The skies are blue with just a hint of cloud, jackets are now being carried, not worn, and the tables on the pavement are in use again. Temperatures are in the mid to high(ish) twenties, which is a welcome relief from the searing heat of not that long ago. I am so glad I did not succumb to the temptation to store the electric fan for the winter and right now it is wafting a welcome cooling breeze about the room.

La Noche en Blanco, the White Night or literally, “Sleepless Night”, seemed to be a great success. Wandering around Gran Via with its normally cream coloured cliffs of building facades painted brilliant colours by gelled floodlights was a wondrous sight. Up every street a crowd gathered to watch some street performance or listen to bands playing every conceivable type of music. I am told the usual long queues meandered slowly outside the major galleries, although as they are there every day of the year this bemuses me. But one should never underestimate the madrileños’ love of anything free! But whether it is vale la pena to wait for hours I am not so sure.

For me the evening will be remembered for another sort of pain. Climbing on to a bus to go to a friend’s house, I slipped and scraped my shin from knee to ankle and fell flat on my face into the bus. (And yes, I was sober!) Several passengers rose from their seat to offer me assistance, which with great bravado I shrugged off, but the pain ……!

I arrived at my friend’s house where the cuts to my leg were immediately attended to with some large dollops of iodine. Ouch! Even more pain. I have been left with a leg that has evolved through all the colours of the rainbow, that has two gaping holes in it, and has twice the circumference of the other leg. I presume it will deflate in time.

Once the wound was dressed and a restorative glass of Mahou had been consumed, we set off to partake in the evening’s events. On nights like this I, as the guiri, am happy to be guided by those that know their culture better. Our group are all of a “certain age”, but had decided to relive their salad days by going to listen to a band from the seventies. We set off for Clamores Jazz club in Chamberi. There we spent an evening in the company of Cánovas, Adolfo y Guzmán. This was only three quarters of the original line up; someone called Rodrigo was missing.

With the three eponymous members playing guitars and a session musician on piano the audience were treated to nearly two hours of a zimmer-framed stumble down memory lane. The three musicians were now all old men. This mattered not to their fans who had come to listen and sing along. Everyone knew the words and were actively encouraged to join in, perhaps to disguise the occasional croaks of age from the stage, although the voice that came from those three old men were not old at all, but still had the timbre of their youth. You can see how in the YouTube clip of one of their more famous songs, covered by just about every Spanish singer of merit, below.

Of course, many of the songs, despite their age, were new to me, and I could not lend my voice to the choir. But when they sang a couple of Beatle’s songs I was right in there – alone – while the rest of the audience kept quiet. Oh what the heck, they were probably too drunk to notice! But Rule Britannia and all that.

After the show we went out into the streets and attempted to listen to a jazz band, invisible among the throng, in the Plaza Dos de Mayo, then wandered through the crowded streets of Chueca down to Gran Via and a solid river of people oozing through the trafficless street.
Without a never ending flow of cars Madrid seems somehow more open, more free and much more sociable. For this night only the city was for the people: Couples, groups of friends, families with their children – some quite young. It was like a tide of humanity had flowed in through the carless streets – and quite magical.
Of course, more has been happening than La Noche en Blanco. No one has been able to avoid the overspill from the Cibeles Madrid fashion week. The newspapers have been full of the wonderful, and downright weird, ideas of the fashionistas. We have seen quite an eclectic mix of designs, but you know very few will ever be seen worn on any high street anywhere.

And they are still shifting the street furniture. “We will have to find a new place to meet in Sol”, suggested ADN newspaper. As part of the renovation of the Plaza del Sol it seems they are moving the statue of the Bear and the Strawberry Tree. But don’t worry too much. We shall not see hoards of rootless tourists missing each other because there is nowhere to meet. They are only putting it back to where to was 30 years ago in front of the Tio Pepe building. According to the report this will be the finishing touch to the remodelling of Sol. Hooray! I have lived here for four and a half years and only one once seen the plaza without work going on. The residents and shopkeepers will be very relieved.
But not those in the neighbouring street of Montera, it would seem. This, of course, is the notorious street where the ladies of negotiable affection ply their trade. Three years ago the residents tried placing webcams on their balconies to put off the girls’ clients and that was followed by the ayuntamiento placing very obvious cameras, with warning signs, along the street. Apparently this has had very little effect. I am not surprised. Two years ago the girls had an alternative venue, the Casa del Campo, but the authorities closed the roads to through traffic, so everyone came into the centre, spilling out along Gran Via. Recently the Gran Via girls had a bust up with the Montera girls when one of the former strayed off pitch. Despite the area being swamped with (blind?) police, it seems quite an affray ensued, according to a friend (honest!) who was an eye witness. “The cameras have had little effect”, claimed QUÉ! Newspaper.

But are lessons learned? I doubt it. At a cost of 600,000 Euros forty eight surveillance cameras have just been installed in the Barrio of Lavapiés. According to the Ayudamiento the activities of the working girls once again are the main reason, but it does have a reputation as a high crime area. I say “reputation” as I have no first hand experience of Lavapiés other than as a place to get the best Indian and Asian food in town. It was once the Jewish quarter with surrounding walls to keeps the jews in after nightfall, until they were all thrown out in 1492. I recently waited for a friend in the Plaza there and eavesdropped in on a conversation between four men; a Moroccan, an indeterminate African, a Chinese and a Spaniard, all sharing one long bench. It is probably the most cosmopolitan plaza in Madrid. Whoever has the job of watching those cameras is going to be very bored.

And going back to the subject of shifting the street furniture, Cristobel Colon, or Christopher Columbus to our American readers, is now all trussed up waiting to be moved to his new home in the centre of the Paseo de la Castellana. To date, the Madrid Municipalities have asked central government for 1,076 million Euros as part of “Plan E”, the scheme to renovate the city by finding jobs for the unemployed. As I have written before, much of this work is needed, but moving the statues does seem like “busy work”, just to keep people in jobs. The government has recently stated it will raise taxes to pay for all this work and some politician voiced the opinion that those who have benefitted from the crisis by having their mortgage repayments reduced as interest rates went down should pay an extra tax so that no one can be seen to profit from the current depression.

I love this town, but sometimes ….!!!!

Still, the weather's turned nice.

Brrrr!-drid

By Richard Morley.

With a resounding drum roll of thunder the end of summer came crashing down on Madrid.

It had been a humid, muggy few days. The sky had ominous grey clouds moving in to obscure the blue skies, but the temperature had only decreased a little from the plus thirties we had been enjoying a few days before. Everyone commented that this was the best time in Madrid. It was cool, but a jacket still wasn’t necessary. Tee shirts and shorts were still being worn at the terrace cafés, even at midnight.

And then in the early evening of Wednesday the clouds gathered into an ominous critical mass and decided, with a series of booms across the city, that what we us humans really needed was lots of rain and temperatures in the mid-teens. Last weekend it was thirty degrees. Today it is thirteen. The weather gods are having a laugh.

The Plaza Mojada, sorry, Mayor.

It is time to find those sayos we all put away on the fortieth of Mayo.

A friend of mine, fed up with the unrelenting, never ending days of summer Twittered to the world that come the first rains he would stand naked in the street and let the cooling shower cascade over him. If he did, he risked pneumonia, because it might have been llover a cántaros, or raining pitchers-full, but it would have been a very cold comfort indeed.

At the time of writing this Madrid has seen a steady drizzle all morning. Nothing for a red-blooded Inglés to bother about, but my portero was very concerned I wasn’t going out with an umbrella.

Plaza Santa Cruz.

Ah yes, the paraguas, the umbrella, as wielded by the denizens of this metropolis is a dangerous instrument. Little Spanish ladies carry their umbrella with the sharp points at standard guiri eye level. They carry them as defiantly as Don Quijote carried his lance – and any other person is regarded as a La Manchan windmill. Beware!

Of course, the extents of the umbrella occupy more space around you than a Spaniard, with their “up close and personal” regard to other peoples’ space, would allow. So sharing a pavement with a granny with a brolly is fraught with dangers. Protect the face at all costs. And the fact that you, umbrella-less, are keeping to the covered, dry parts of the walkway, matters not a jot. They want that area too. Men, be a gentleman and keep to the kerb. Ladies, you can battle it out as you see fit.

And I have just return from a bus trip where I saw a man use his umbrella to push the stop request button without leaving his seat. He did not waver in his aim. These people use umbrellas as the Taliban use ground to air missiles!

Soggy Sol.

I am reminded of a time when I was meeting with some friends in the Plaza de Callao. There was a steady downpour, but no cats and dogs were tumbling off the roofs, and a young Chinese man was selling umbrellas in the street. “Paraguas, dos Euros”, he cried to not many takers. But suddenly the nature of the shower changed into a small tropical storm with huge drops, like a misty spray, rebounding half a metre off the paving slabs. Without missing a beat the young Chinese changed his cry to, “Paraguas, tres Euros”. In two steps the price of this now very necessary item had increased fifty percent. Good business!

And I am also reminded that those friends I was meeting berated me for not having an umbrella on such an evening. “Are you English?” they reproached me. Apparently all Englishmen are born with an umbrella. But at least I was dressed sensibly: My berating friend was wearing open-toed, low slung, sling back shoes which were easily swamped by the onrushing flow that cascaded down the Rio Grande, sorry, I mean Gran Via, but that evening it was difficult to tell the difference.

Sensible shoes.

It’s not quite that bad, yet. But for the first time sine June I am wearing a sweater. My cleaner, who for the past few months has been coming to work in tiny shorts and flip-flops, which has quite brightened my days, is today dressed like an Eskimo.

The cars move along my street with a swishing sound, leaving a small wake behind them. But it has given me the chance to introduce a new word into the vocabulary of my students: Puddle. They can all say, “It’s raining cats and dogs”, but no one has taught them what not to step into.

There again, maybe the other thing you might step into on the streets of Madrid has been washed away!

Rain, a drop of twenty degrees! Is this what they call global warming?

Of course, I blame it on the Ayuntamiento, the City council. This weekend sees one of my favourite nights in Madrid, La Noche en Blanco.
From 7pm on Saturday until 7am on Sunday the streets in the centre will be closed to all traffic and all over Madrid will be hundreds of cultural events covering the high arts to the circus – and it is all completely free.

But it is cursed.

Two years ago we went to watch a singer who was giving a concert at the Temple of Debod, Madrid’s Egyptian temple. It was a pleasant, warm night. The crowd gathered, the singer came out of the temple to rapturous applause and – the skies opened. It was as if the bomberos, the fire fighters, had opened their hoses on us. There was no shelter apart from a few trees and bushes which soon became saturated. We ran down to the Plaza España where there was shelter and I remember well that the rain was so heavy that the huge Edificio de España, at the other end of the plaza, was completely obscured. I heard that the singer gave her concert in full, but I have no idea who to.

The bars did a good trade that night!

But I also remember walking with a million others up a traffic free Gran Via while a tightrope walker teetered overhead, a brilliant concert given by the Jazz Orchestra of Spain on the steps of the congress building, a circus at the Bernabeu and of other smaller events taking place in each little plaza and park. You can see flamenco, Tango, ballet. You can hear great jazz, blues and rock. You can watch performance art of every hue. (The usual buskers won’t get a look in!) You can get, if you can stand the queues, into all the galleries for free and go back stage at the Opera House. It is a fantastic night.

With only one thing to annoy me.

The event is organised by the Community of Madrid, the same organisation who run the metro. So why, if the event runs from 7pm to 7am can’t they, for this one night of the year, keep the metro running all night. With a couple of million people out on the town the night buses just cannot cope. So it makes it a good night for the taxi drivers too. With their after midnight charges they must make a killing. Two years ago I decided to walk the four kilometres home after deciding the buses were too crowded and not an empty taxi in sight. I am sure this could be better organised. But if it rains, imagine four million people with umbrellas.

Take a look at the pictures of the previous post. I took them only just four days ago. If the weather continues to deteriorate at this rate, there will be icebergs floating down the mighty Manzenares and penguins in the Retiro.

Breaking Out

By Richard Morley.
Calle del Principe de Vergara running through the District of Salamanca.

In 1789 the population of Madrid, confined within Felipe the second’s ancient walls, was 140,000. Not quite seventy years later, in 1857, that figure had doubled to 281,170. The walls were bulging.

This had been foreseen by the writer, statesman and leading figure in Spain’s Age Of Enlightenment, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos a century before, and by Juan Merlo, a Madrid engineer, in 1842. Merlo, who had been one of the original designers of the Plaza de Oriente near the Royal Palace, had actually drawn up some plans to expand the town, but they were rejected.

It wasn’t that the citizens were breeding like rabbits; this was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The rural population was leaving the fields and coming to Madrid in large numbers, lured by the better pay, and hopefully better lifestyle found by working in one of the increasing numbers of cast iron foundries and weaving factories. Something had to be done.

Luckily, this was a time when great public works were begun. Anyone who has seen a manhole cover in Madrid will see that the public water system is known as the Canal de Isabel II. She was the queen at the time.

The Minister for Public Works, José Posada Herrera tried to introduce legislation called El Proyecto de Ley General para la Reforma, Saneamiento, Ensanche y otras Mejoras de la Poblaciones. (The General Law for the reform, health, expansion and other improvments of the towns.) To, I am sure, his great disappointment this, like Merlo’s plans eighteen years before, was rejected by the senate. It was a pity he did not have a crystal ball to offer in evidence. Twenty years later the population of Madrid would have almost doubled to 400,000. Mid IX century Madrid.

Eventually the burgeoning populations of all cities persuaded the parliament to promote expansion. The first “Ley de Ensanche”, law of enlargement, was passed on the 29th June 1864. It allowed local authorities to compulsorily purchase land outside of the existing boundaries. Three more “Laws of enlargement” were passed in 1867 in which developers had to have their plans approved; in 1876, which were no more than a redefining of the rules; and in 1892, which made the regulations nationwide.

The job of expanding Madrid fell to the city’s chief engineer, Carlos María del Castro and his associate, Carlos Ibáñez de Ibero. They had actually published their plans in 1860, but had to wait for the Ley de Enlargement before beginning their implementation.

The first thing to happen was that the ancient walls of Felipe Segundo came tumbling down.

Castro thought that Madrid could expand in three directions: North, North East, and South. It shows how cramped Madrid must have been prior to this time when it is realised that the three areas he had in mind are today very much inner city neighbourhoods: Chamberi, Embajadores / Atocha, and Salamanca.

This was a time of an expanding middle class. Great social change was upon the city. With all the public works, the sanitation and water supply, a gas supply, a postal service and the first trams and railways, the expansion of the military, the increasing numbers of civil servants, lawyers, professors and serving officers required homes to befit their station.

Chamberi had already felt the effects of the Industrial Revolution and had two main industries: Brickworks and Tile manufactures. I apologise to those who live their now, but this was always a working class neighbourhood! And the river, with its smell and insects made going south a poor choice.

Where were the new middle classes to go?

Their hopes rested on one man. His name was José de Salamanca y Mayol, who would later become the Marquis de Salamanca. A wealthy entrepreneur and sometime banker, Salamanca was the epitome of Madrid’s commercial leaders and a driving force for progress.

José de Salamanca y Mayol, the epitome of Chulo, looking down his nose at the rest of us.

But he was a man who had gained and lost several fortunes in his lifetime. He had done well with an investment in Spain’s first railway, which went from Madrid to Aranjuez, and also with the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad in the United States. He has a town named after him in New York State. Google Earth view of the Salamanca District.

In the 1860s he began to develop a huge area directly to the northeast of the current city. Delineated as a rough triangle whose base ran from the Pueta de Alcalá, one of the old gates of the city, to what was then called the Plaza del Roma, but now known as Manuel Becerra and up to the Republica de Argentina. His plans for the district predated Cerda in Barcelona and Soria in Madrid in that streets were laid out on a grid plan similar to New York.
The streets were wide and tree lined, the buildings modern, for the time, and well served with amenities. The upwardly mobile moved there in droves.
And the new distrct carried his name – Salamanca.

But great plans are expensive. The nouveau-riche might have wanted to move into this new development, but the old, more influential money stayed put in old Madrid. Greater expansion was put on hold for lack of funds; Properties did not sell quickly enough and the money ran out.

This was the beginning of the end for the man. He lost money on the stock market and in his involvement with the Banco Isabella II, meant to be Spain’s first central bank, which was a disaster. The endeavour won him his nobility, but when he died in 1883 he was in debt.

He died in the neighbourhood of Carabanchel; he could not afford to live in the district that took his name. This is ironic as the district of Salamanca is home to many of Madrid’s rich, famous and royal. Before “La Crisis” it was not unusual to see an apartment in Salamanca sell for three million euros. I doubt if the crisis has affected the residents too much.

As an administrative district it has overflowed its original boundaries to take in the neighbouring barrios of Guindalera, Goya and Ibiza, which has definitely raised the snobby tone of those poorer barrios – and the rents that are charged in them. Given the nature of its population the district has always been staunchly right wing. During the civil war, before Franco’s Nationalist forces took the city, many of his supporters lived there by keeping a very low profile. In fact has been said that the squadrons of the German Condor Legion were ordered not to bomb the neighbourhood for fear of alienating the Nationalist faction.
This leads us to a second irony in this Nationalist stronghold. Running east-west through the barrio are two major thoroughfares: Calle de Juan Bravo and the Calle José Ortega y Gasset.

Juan Bravo was a leader of a rebel group during the Castillian War of the Communities. This was an uprising by the people against the king, Carlos V. The rebels were defeated in 1521 and he was beheaded. He has, incidentally, nothing to do with the cartoon character Johnnie Bravo, despite that being what a friend claims.

José Ortega y Gasset was not actually a rebel, but did lead the intellectual opposition to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and played an important role in the overthrow of Alfonso XIII in 1931. His main occupation was as a writer, journalist and editor. He did become, for a short time, a politician for the republicans, but soon abandoned politics and exiled himself to Argentina at the start of the Civil War. He did not return until 1948.

Being a philosopher, he is often quoted. His best known line is, “I am I and my circumstances”, which is almost theft of Descartes “I think therefore I am”, but he also claimed that, “A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation”, which given that Franco’s regime lasted thirty five years meant that was a little mistaken. I find it strange that he is held in high enough esteem to be quoted on the web page of Spain’s ultra right party, El Frente National, as he wrote, “Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions”, and “Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority”. I won’t dignify the party who thinks I should return from whence I came by quoting the out of context paragraph.

All of life's little necessities can be found in C/José Ortega y Gasset.

Nowadays, the name José Ortega y Gasset is a by word for luxury. Together with Francisco Serrano, Duque de la Torre, who helped depose Isabel II in 1868 and whose eponymous Calle runs perpendicular to Ortega y Gasset and is known as “Madrid’s fifth Avenue”, the two streets are a mecca for those seeking luxury labels to impress their friends. They are all there: Dior, Chanel, Burberry, Tiffany and several more. It’s a good place to walk. I know my money is safe – I can’t afford to spend it!

No, I am wrong! There is one shop that does get my money. Calle José Ortega y Gasset boasts the highest class of green-grocer in Madrid. The Gold Gourmet is the only place in Madrid that sells Parsnips, the infamous, on this blog anyway, Chirivias. And I live nearby. Sometimes it’s good to have rich neighbours.

Any comments? Feel free below.

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The Last of the Summer Whine

By Richard Morley.

The remains of summer are blasting through the wall. Within a week those responsible for the too many decibels of, I think they call it music, will mercifully, for me, have returned to their desks and schoolbooks. The beaches of the Costas are once again the province of the ancient Brits, the parks of Madrid will have no one to notice the leaves turn gold. The gridlock on the streets will have replaced the sardine crush of the Benidorm sunbathers.

In the month of August Madrid is like a ghost town. I am greatly amused when visitors tell me what a “quiet” city Madrid is and “How wonderfully free of traffic”. They make their annual pilgrimage here only in August.

I stood at a pedestrian crossing a couple of weeks ago wondering why I was waiting for the lights to change. There wasn’t a car in sight. I strolled across all eight lanes of the normally busy Paseo de la Castellana at 8pm one evening ant thought they were remaking the opening scene of Vanilla Sky in Madrid. It was deserted.

Of course, that would have been a re-remake as Vanilla Sky was based on the 1997 Spanish film Abre los Ojos (Open your eyes). The lovely Penelope Cruz played the same role in both movies. It was a pity that Tom Cruise was in any of them.

The rush hour metro trains have that late night feel to them. Passengers sit listlessly, wilting in the heat that the on board air-conditioning can never quite combat. And there are seats. No standing shoulder to shoulder watching your fellow travellers. It must be lean picking for the pick-pockets.

There are those that tell me that Madrid is wonderful in August because “You can always get a seat in a restaurant”. Maybe, but what restaurant? So many of my favourites close as their owners take their vacation. Visitors ask me for recommendations, but I am never sure if the place will be open.

But some are: Those who cater specifically for the tourist and who, in the local parlance, are, “Making their August”, with inflated prices. No restaurateur around the Plaza Mayor will shut his doors to the August Guiri. Although, surprisingly, several of the gift shops in the nearby Calle de Toledo, did.

Out of the centre the story repeats: Useful shops like grocers, tobacconists and newsagents either close completely or have just a few specific hours of opening. Throw in a fiesta and the situation is impossible. On the 14th of August I returned after two weeks away to an empty fridge and pantry and set out to replenish the stocks only to find not one shop open. It was the Verbena de Paloma, or Paloma’s Fair where there may well be music and dancing in the streets, but a not a loaf of bread or carton of milk to be found. Three cheers for the Chinese shops that have limited stocks but never close.

I would not have been surprised to see tumbleweeds rolling along Gran Via.

Madrid is a friendly city where, I am pleased to think, I have many good friends. But not in August. They jet away on foreign vacations – or visit the village of their ancient relatives. I too spent most of the month not here, but went out of town to the sierras of the Peña de Francia, contemplating in the cool of the mountains, that in Madrid I had just one friend. The day that I left the mountains my friend arrived there. So now I had no friends. Qué triste! How sad is that?

But now September has arrived. People are back in their offices, traffic clogs the street. English teachers who have survived the past few weeks on zero income are happy to see their students return. The smell of the city has changed as fresh air is replaced by exhaust gasses. Trains and buses are standing room only and there are queues outside every restaurant offering a decent Menu del Dia.

The open top buses offering expensive sight-seeing trips to the tourists are now half empty. The last lingering back-packers are leaving. The restaurants in the Plaza Mayor have to cater for a more discriminating clientele. (Who, if they are that discriminating, won’t go there anyway!)

Madrid has become Spanish again. My friends have returned. They are not so happy as they have returned to work, but I get to take long lazy lunches again with my favourite people. Today in fact. People I haven’t seen for several long weeks have invited me to take comida.

My favourite city, dead for the past month, has come alive again. The traffic is noisy, the streets are crowded, and the language is Spanish. Welcome back one and all.

Now, only five more days until the kids with their pounding music return to school. Already the summer smile is being replaced with the scholastic scowl. Their vacation is far too long! Come Monday – heaven. I can’t wait.

Shoes and Ships and Railway Stations.

By Richard Morley.

What do a Railway station, a shoe and a shipwreck have in common?

Returning from a night on the town with some friends, we were accosted by a couple of English lads who, pleased at hearing their language spoken, explained they were lost and had no idea how to find their hostel. “It’s in a place that sounds like a sneeze”, they explained. “Like ‘a-tishoo’”.

One of the Españolas in our group said, “You mean Atocha”.

“That’s it”, one of the misplaced revellers cried, and started singing the old English nursery rhyme:
Ring-a-ring o' roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.

Only he replaced the onomatopoeic “A-tishoo!” with “Atocha”. It feels me with deep shame and embarrassment that my friends and I were drunk enough to actually find this funny! This wouldn’t work in US English. I noticed, while I was looking up the correct spelling of “a-tishoo”, that in their version of the rhyme they only say “tishoo”. What the heck! Don’t they breathe in before they sneeze?

I suppose “Atocha” does have a sort of comedic mellifluence about it. Well it does if you are not exactly sober!

We were near Opera at the time and had to tell the guys they had a fairly long walk ahead of them, it being around four thirty in the morning and the metro closed.

If you think about it, all names of places must have had a meaning once, but times change and the meaning changes or become forgotten and we are left with just a name. Then late one night, although not as late as in the tale recounted above, I thought of those young men and their silly recitation and wondered, why Atocha?

Just south of the Plaza Mayor, in the Calle de Toledo, stands a shop that has been selling a particular type of shoe since 1860. Called Casa Hernanz, it sells espadrilles, or as they are called in Spanish – alpagatas, the rope soled shoe. The rope used in their manufacture is made from halfah grass, also known as Needle grass or Esparto grass – hence “espadrilles”. It is not only shoes that are made from this material, but also paper and baskets.

The grass is found in many places in the world, but the best, according to the workers, is home grown Spanish grass from Andulacia. Indeed, there is a town near Seville called Espartinas and, in Spain a worker in this industry is called an Espartero.

But while the south of Spain might now have the monopoly, it was not always like this. Once it was a major industry in Madrid as can be evidenced from the street that runs from the Puerta del Sol to the Plaza Santa Anna.

It was reported that when the parish church of a district in Madrid was being built, whole swathes of this grass was found growing on the site and while the Sevillanas might call it “esparto”, botanists call it Macrochloa tenacissima, in Madrid it was known as “tocha” or “atocha”. And this definition can be found in Collins English-Spanish dictionary.
And so the barrio got its name.

The Present Day Basilica of Our Lady Of Atocha

The parish church is the Real Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Atocha or The Royal Basilica of our lady of Atocha. Legend has it that a small icon of the virgin was found in the long grasses growing on the site at the time of the reconquista. The church was built and a whole neighbourhood grew up around it. There have been several churches on the site. The present one dates back to the last rebuilding in 1951 following the destruction of its predecessor during the Civil War.

The Basilica before being destroyed in the Civil War.

But what of the icon that was found in the long “tocha” grasses?

Legend has it that it was a small carving of the Madonna and child and it was curious that the child wore shoes and a hat made from esparto grass. It seems that before the reconquista, when Spain was ruled by the Moors, the Caliph had the people of Atocha arrested and imprisoned because of their Christian faith. The Moors provided no food for the prisoners, but the Caliph issued an order that, in a spirit of charity, children under the age of twelve could bring food to their families.

But what of those without children under twelve; what of the aged and the infirm? The story continues that in the dead of night a small child would bring a basket of bread for all those who were hungry. No one knew where the child came from or to whom he belonged, but there was always enough bread to feed those who needed it. In thanks they would pray to the small sculpture of the Madonna and child and one day it was noticed that the esparto grass shoes of the child were wearing thin. To show their gratitude the prisoners made some new shoes and fitted them to the small effigy. The child continued to bring food and again it was seen that the shoes were wearing thin. The people believed it was the Christ child himself who was bringing the food and gave thanks to the virgin and her holy son.

When the Moors were finally expelled from the country this miracle was celebrated with the building of the first basilica.

The building of Madrid’s main railway station in 1851 was half a kilometre from the Basilica. It was originally known as El Estación del Mediodía, but due to its proximity to the basilica and being in the parish, became colloquially known as Atocha Station. This is now its official name. Thank goodness. Midday Station would really have been silly.

The original station burned down and was rebuilt is 1892. Similar to many glass and cast iron structures throughout Europe it served the city for exactly 100 years when the new terminal came into operation. The old glass expanse now houses a tropical forest.

The new AVE terminal brought the station even closer to the basilica of Our Lady of Atocha and it is somehow fitting that the glass tower of the memorial remembering those lost in the terrorist bombing at the station is visible from the parish church.

The legend of the Santo Niño continued. It was carried to the New World by the conquistadores. In those far off lands the faithful needed the protection of such miracles.

In 1622 a savage hurricane decimated 28 Spanish galleons laden with treasure in the channel between Havana and the Florida Keys. Two of them were dashed against the reefs and sank near Marquesa Key, about 40 miles west of Key West. One was called the Margarita and the other, the Atocha.

In 1980 the wreck of the Margarita was found and more than $40 million dollars of the treasure recovered. Five years later, they found the remains of the Atocha. What a find! More than $400 million dollars in gold bars, silver coins and emeralds were discovered in its rotting timbers.
After all these years, the spirit of Our Lady of Atocha and her infant son continue to provide.