This January marked the sad end of Hungary’s national airline, Malév, which most people thought was a perfectly good airline with the disadvantage of being financially mismanaged in a tiny and equally financially mismanaged national market. Within minutes of the semi-sudden announcement, before even securing a deal with the recently expanded and now near-empty Ferenc Liszt airport, our new national carrier, Ryanair was advertising some rock bottom getting-to-know you rates to a large number of attractive European destinations. So I did a quick kilometer from home/forint calculation factored by average hours of sunlight in late March vis-á-vis the price of a beer in the destination city, and it turned out we would be visiting sunny Madrid for a long weekend for about 80 USD round trip each. And just in time too! I hadn’t been anywhere in ages, although an early spring in Hungary meant we wouldn't be experiencing a significant improvement weather-wise.
This is our third trip to Spain, and first to the capital. Today it’s one of my favorite countries to visit but I might come from an American generation of liberal cultural establishment snobbism that once worshipped France and Italy, not caring so much for vitality, and looked at Spain with a bit of distaste as simultaneously the unreformed land of the Falange and a slightly less downscale version of Mexico. I’d always meant to go, but even though I’d read my Hemingway and always had a thing for Spanish wine, for some reason I never got really excited about the idea until I moved to Europe and heard glowing recommendations from various ex-pats who had lived or holidayed there. Also, a number of Hungarians of around my age or a few years older have fond memories from the late 80s, when they were free to leave the country but could only take a very limited amount of foreign currency with them, so they would buy a Eurail pass in forints and ride it to the end of the line in Spain, which was still a relatively cheap country, and live off bread and the knapsack full of sausages they had brought from home. Now Spain doesn’t seem cheap at all, especially Madrid, and especially if you are paid in forints!
Our first full day starts with a tour around the center. The first thing we notice is that Madrid is overrun with garbage. The second thing we notice is, what are all these cops in riot gear doing around the Puerta del Sol? And what does this word “Huelga” that everyone is chanting mean? “Huelga general” answers a friendly barman serving us cáfé con leche, in response to Moni’s “Che paso en la calle?” (she actually speaks some Spanish, whereas I just babble in my surprisingly effective pan-Romance mishmash peppered with bits of the Tijuana Toads). And there it is on the TV new scroll line “Huelga general” in Seville, Barcelona, Valencia… holy cow! the whole country’s on strike.
Continuing our walk past the palace and back to Plaza Mayor, mobile units of strikers are calling the proletariat to arms, with a chant of "Hoy no se consume, hoy no se trabaja!" and towards noon (Spaniards don’t seem to like getting out of bed early, but I suppose that’s the whole point of a general strike) larger bands of communists, anarchists, and other malcontents were roaming the streets.
It’s surprising to see such a massive strike in a country with around 24 percent – and much higher for the young – unemployment: instead you would expect to see a general give-your-boss-a-hug day. But the strikers are, indeed, mostly young people, presumably university students, and they are protesting, it seems, not so much their working conditions, since most of them wouldn't have any work, but instead a set of no-doubt much-needed reforms instituted by the current government that will make their jobs, if they ever get one, much less cushy than they would have been in the past. We’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing all over Europe, I think, if not elsewhere, as the current situation unfolds. In general, I think the reforms are probably necessary, especially in a country like Spain whose real economy, no matter how far it has come, is still not that of a Denmark or even a France, but on the other hand, the kids have a point: this is more Generation XYZ funding of baby boomer profligacy.
The strikes are getting a little ugly now. The marchers are plastering red Huelga General stickers on storefronts and hectoring shopkeepers to shut their doors, which they almost all do, with an occasional scuffle breaking out in the process. McDonald’s, committed to feeding the masses, stands bravely open, covered with stickers, but KFC never even opened that morning (coz they’re chicken, hehe).
Then a horrible thought crosses our minds simultaneously: what if, on our first day in Spain, we get nothing to eat? We decide to hightail it from the center.
At the Banco de España, there’s some graffiti but no real protesting, except some shouting cyclists. I think in most countries if you deface the reserve bank you would probably instantly have all of your identification numbers deleted and would spend the rest of your short miserable existence wandering the financial districts as a financial non-entity, searching the gutters for the odd dropped call option or bearer bond to keep body and soul together, but apparently in Spain they take such things in stride and this graffiti, like most of the stickers and other scribbles, was gone two days later. In Budapest you can still find political graffiti directed against Ferenc Gyurcsány, two prime ministerships ago.
In the Parque del Buen Retiro, people and squirrels are hard at work relaxing in spite of the strike, and on the far side of the park, where the residential neighborhoods start, everything is functioning normally, from what we can tell. We enjoy a pleasant (and inexpensive) lunch at a local café where the customers watch the strike on TV, shaking their heads disapprovingly as though it were taking place in some distant country, and not 2 kilometres away.
So we spend the rest of the day exploring the outer belt of downtown Madrid, where regular people live and play, up past the Plaza de España where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (we would see the two of them again in Budapest a few days later in Budapest dancing with members of the Bolshoi in Minkus’ eponymous ballet) guarding Franco’s bizarre Edifio España luxury apartment building.
And some old-timers attempt to explain to us the joys of pétanque.
We walked the length of this elongated park that crosses the Príncipe Pio, the hill housing the French barracks during the Napoleonic war, and the site of Goya’s masterpiece, The Third of May 1808, one of the more impressive sights in the Prado, all the more so for being painted in 1814, and not 60 years later.
And then a well-deserved glass of fino as evening set in with sore feet. Except for a cheerful gang of anarchists, the protesters were now disbanded and, banners slumped over their shoulders, were scouring the streets hoping to find an open place to have their supper.
The next day we complete our tour of now peaceful old Madrid. One advantage of the strikes is that most people seemed to have taken Friday off too, making a long weekend of it, sparing our lungs quite a bit of exhaust fumes.
This is the place to have chocolate and churros, as the wall full of autographed international celebrity photos attests.
The now-demilitarized Plaza Mayor.
The palace (this isn’t the front façade, but I am a thrall to plinths).
And various pleasant streets and views. That evening we dined at Javier Bardem’s restaurant, Bardemcillo. I didn’t know who he was but Móni says I’ve seen him in lots of movies. I know who Penelope Cruz is though. She’s his main squeeze. Anyway, Javier and Penelope are fairly good cooks, although I wouldn’t say we tasted anything truly remarkable there, except maybe for the plate of elvers with garbanzos. And the staff is friendly.
Spanish blood pudding tastes exactly Hungarian blood pudding! Except we don’t dice it up like this or gussy it up with watercress and sprouts, and we charge about two-thirds less for it. Such are the lessons of value-added marketing we must learn from our brethren in the West.
Day 3 is spent on a day-trip to Toledo via the Atocha station (the site of the 2004 terrorist attack. What happens when NATO forces leave Afghanistan? Sadly, I’m pretty sure more of these.)
Toledo is sort of the obligatory day trip for first time visitors to Madrid. As medieval cities go, there are lots of more impressive one in Europe, but it’s fun to walk around here for an afternoon, more if you have an unusually strong interest in Spanish history from the Reconquista, El Greco, or Jewish Spain prior to the Inquisition. We walked down to the new town to get lunch in a regular café, rather than an overpriced tourist restaurant.
Our fourth and final day is Palm Sunday, the first day of Santa Semana, which one day I will have to experience in Spain in its totality. After duly watching palm fronds being marched around town and into churches, we spend the day in the Prado. And not only the Prado, because half of the Hermitage has also come to visit. We toured the Hermitage in St. Petersburg a few years back, but since chances aren’t bad I will never return to Russia (whereas I probably will to Madrid) we decided to do some catching up with those work too. Anyway, as can be imagined, it was total painting overload, but I did get to fully assimilate the Brueghels (esp. The Triumph of Death), the works of Bosch and most of the Goyas, but several thousand paintings later ran out of steam to fully appreciate the more subtle Spanish masters, Velazquez in paticular.
Oh well, next time, because Madrid has definitely made it onto my list of favorite cities. I think for a next trip to Spain I would like to start and end here an extended tour through the Basque Country, Asturias, and Galicia.
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