Madrid--Big City, Bright Lights

Well, yesterday morning, the bus from Segovia stopped at one corner of the University of Madrid campus, and I stepped off. We had been driving through Madrid for twenty minutes. It´s the first Spanish town or city since Granada that actually had a suburb. One of the unique elements of Spanish urban planning is that the edge of town really is an edge; that is, the town just stops and mountains or green farm land just starts.

Madrid is big. I mean millions-of-people-with-its-own-subway-system big. It is a little scary just walking out onto a streetcorner and realizing that you have fifty pounds of stuff on your back and no hotel--not even a good city map. I found the city center on the subway wall map, rode there, and walked around for a couple of hours until I found a nice hostela for the next few nights. I´m right across from the Madrid Opera and in the theater district; just around the corner, The Producers and Mamma Mia are playing. I visited Madrid´s famous Plaza Mayor, a four-hundred-year-old gathering place. I stopped at a bar in the corner of the Plaza where Hemingway liked to drink (of course, he liked to drink a lot of places). The old boy would probably have been disappointed in me because I only had a mineral water and a chocolate torte (soooo good).

Here´s your short list of what´s hot and what´s not in Madrid. First, soccer--there are two major league soccer teams in town; "Real Madrid" is hot, "Athletico Madrid" is not (this is like rooting for the Yankees vs. the Mets). Kids play soccer everywhere, and everynight on TV there´s some story about some soccer player or coach somewhere. On any given street corner downtown, you will see one of the following: Burger King, MacDonald´s, TGI Friday, or KFC. Everything Cuban is hot. There are Cuban dance clubs, Cuban cigars, Cuban music plays on the street, and kids wear Cuba tee-shirts. There are ¨Cubanito¨ cafes that serve Cuban food, and there´s even a woman on TV named ¨La Cubana¨ who will tell your fortune for a dial-up fee. What´s unusual about Madrid as opposed to other Spanish cities I´ve visited is that it has continued to modernize. Few buildings are older than 400 years (relatively new for Spain)--it´s the art and culture that people come to see.

Today, I have been touring two of the world´s great art museums, the Prado and the Thyssen. When I was eleven, my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Gefritch pointed me to a copy of Granger´s History of Art. I´ve been hooked ever since. Many of the world masterpieces I saw in a book years ago were inches from my face today. There were rooms full of Spanish masters--Murillo, Goya, El Greco, or Velazquez. I loved the Goya ¨Black Paintings¨--look at ¨Saturn¨ by Goya on the internet; it´ll give you nightmares. Of the Spanish works, my favorite was El Greco´s "Adoration of the Shepherds." It has a swirling motion and a sense of simplicity that matches the shepherds as subjects--the rich wonder on their faces juxtaposed with the poverty of their attire provides a perfect contrast. If I had a choice of favorite periods in art, I´d take anything Italian Renaissance or anything from the Flemish School. Dozens of works by Raphael (and other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) were on display; two painting by Andrea del Sarto seemed to shimmer in darkness--what a talent. But of the Italians, Fra Angelico´s "Anunciation" was nothing short of amazing. This was one of those works in Granger´s that I attracted my attention long ago. It´s a work I´ve returned to in books or on the net. There is no reproductive method that duplicates standing in front of this work. The blue of Mary´s gown is far lighter, deeper, and richer than I had ever imagined. The gold halos and streaks of gold from heaven are comprised of strokes from a bursh heavily laden with paint. As you move, the gold flickers with a three-dimensional glow--the effect is dazzeling.

Oh, there were too many great works to completely describe. Allegorical works by Brueghel, Albrecht Durer´s self-portrait, Rogier van der Weyden´s "The Descent from the Cross"--all beautiful beyond those thousand words a picture is supposed to be worth. Finally, if you want to look just one up on the net, try Hieronymus Bosch´s "The Garden of Earthly Delights." Man. This IS a nightmare. I´ve used the work in class to illustrate allegory and use of symbolism. It´s larger than I´d have imagined and certainly drew a crowd. I went back to this and to Fra Angelico several times before I could finally leave the museum.

Tonight, I have tickets to hear the Madrid Men´s Choir perform at the opera; the first half of the program is Bach, the second half is 18th-century Spanish traditional. !Olé¡