A Night in Madrid by Daniel Scott
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"Do you know what I love about this city?" asks Mark reflectively, at 5.30am, on a balcony overlooking the concourse of Madrid’s astonishing Atocha station: "The squares, the outdoor life, places to dawdle and gawp, bars to flit through on the way somewhere else."
Mark, native Madrilena Ester and I have just spent the entire Madrid night dawdling, gawping and flitting through bars. I’m now filled with a sense of youthful naughtiness mixed with zest for life which I always get when I see evening through to sunrise. It’s a feeling that’s available every night in Madrid.
"Dwelling over a long lunch," Mark’s eulogy to Madrid continues, "working early, playing late." Ester nods agreement. I’m beginning to feel that I’m on the set of a film, directed perhaps by Almodovar, the idiosyncratic Spanish filmmaker - who we encountered during the long night in one of the many bars we stopped in - and starring Mark, a former Bridlington boy who’s found his soul in Madrid.
Below us, on the concourse, steam rises on Atocha’s indoor tropical garden, young men and women greet each other amorously off the night trains and others, immaculately-dressed, head home after many hours of revelry. I’m certain that, at any moment, somebody’s going to snap a clapperboard shut and shout: "Madrid- the movie - Scene 82, take 3. Action."
Of course, if this were a movie and, given Madrid’s special fascination for the visual, it would be the only way to tell even part of the city’s story, the likelihood is that the majority of it would be shot at night. It would start on a mid-summer evening at a bar in the colonaded Plaza Mayor, with tourists and locals sipping beer outside in the diminishing heat of day. The camera would oggle an array of tapas on the tables - from chunks of potato omelette (tortilla) through rings of fresh calamares to slices of spicy sausages sizzling in a deep red wine sauce - before panning over the imposing stone-paved plaza, with its busy arcades and fresco-adorned facades. Finally, we’d zoom in on the statue of Philip 3 on horseback at the centre of the square. symbolising Spain’s so-called Golden Age, during the sixteenth and sevnteenth century. It was at that time that Madrid was inaugurated (by Philip 2) as the nation’s capital and that Plaza Mayor became the venue for coronations, bullfights, festivals and the finger-pointing of the Inquisition.
From here we’d move on, following a garrulous group of Madrilenos and possibly the odd boy from Bridlington, through a slightly shabby labyrinth of city-centre streets to a late-night meal at an old tavern. Perhaps to Botin, bullfighting enthusiast Ernest Hemingway’s one-time haunt, maybe to Posada La Villa, a traveller’s inn dating back to 1642. Here, we’d track a huge rack of lamb as it was borne out of a furnace-like oven on a shovel and cut to a scene inside the high-beamed restaurant in which our cast chat and chomp their way through dinner. Glowing in the candle-light, Spanish wine the colour of cherries swashes around a glass as it flows from the bottle.
Outside again as the clock strikes midnight and we’re in another humming square, the Plaza Santa Ana, near the Teatro Espanol, where a wise-cracking waiter (probably a Castizo, the Madrid version of a cockney) lays down coffees and brandies in front of our assembled throng. The bar is busier now than at any other time of day, one corner crowded with around twenty giggling teenagers, while at other tables sit smooching couples and families with small children Around the square stray dogs yap, low lifes cadge and the broad stone buildings surrounding look on impassively.
For the next few scenes we find ourselves in a succession of cacophonous, swelling bars as our Madrilenos and one Yorkshireman kick on. Inside one, Los Gabrieles, a former brothel run by gypsies, the frescoes on its ceramically tiled walls are nearly as noisy as the music and the hubub of people shouting over it. In another, the 1920s La Dolores, discussion moves effortlessly from politics through religion to football, which is when it starts to get really passionate!
By 5am crowds start to spill back into the half-light of a Madrid dawn. On some of the city’s main arteries, like the Paseo del Prado, there are actually traffic-jams. A few of our cast make their way along a now quieting Calle Atocha toward the station, bypassing a few sleazy dives as they go. Finally, as the hue of the Madrid morning evolves to an ever more blazing blue, they move inside the station and take their places, on a balcony above the concourse, for a bout of almost ritualistic people-watching. Contemplative, yet uplifting, it could be the movie’s last scene.
But no, it’s not a movie, it’s just an ordinary Sunday morning in Madrid and Yorkshireman Mark is telling Ester and I why he’s here to stay. "It’s like two different cities," he continues, "a huge busy metropolis full of grand, beautiful buildings by day and then an intimate, thriving village by night. Down this alleyway or that, inside this unpromising looking bar or that, there’s always something going on."
We stand there on the balcony for over an hour and a half, talking in snatches, drinking in the awakening tableau below. Eventually, Ester breaks a long silence with: "so, what shall we do next?" Next? Personally, I’m beginning to think that a long shower back at my hotel, the splendid Villa Real, might be a good idea. "You wanna go to Toledo?" continues Ester. Everything I’ve heard about the ancient city nearby has made me itch to visit: it has, people say, "the cathedral to die for", it is dripping with El Greco paintings and you can get lost among its maze of steep streets. But my flagging energy is letting me down. "Perhaps another day," Ester agrees intuitively. "El Escorial?" The much-vaunted monastery built by Philip 2nd in the hills west of Madrid is another must, but not for today. "OK", Ester finally relents, "breakfast". Images of steaming ink-black coffees and doughy pastries flood my brain, but before they have time to settle, she adds: "then perhaps the Prado".
Fortified by a succession of coffees and energised by indefatigable Ester we do indeed saunter straight out of the Madrid night and into one of the world’s most priceless art collections. Inspired by our prowl around the Prado, we then move onto both the Thyssen Museum and the Reina Sofia Gallery, the first a delightful hotch-potch of paintings of different styles from a variety of eras and countries, the second a powerful contemporay collection (including important works by Picasso, Dali, Miro and Kadinsky).
Once more I feel like I’m on the set of an Art House movie, maybe a sequel called "Madrid 2, Scenes from an exhibition". Only this time I’m in it, standing in one scene, at the Prado, smirking in front of a sardonic depiction of royalty by Goya, and in another, at the Reina Sofia, contemplating Picasso’s masterpiece "Guernica" , as persuasive a denunciation of war and fascism as can have been painted. The film, and our long night’s journey into day, draws to a close in the expansive gardens of Buen Retiro, as a still perky native of Madrid and two dog-tired Brits, stroll at the edge of a lake in the late afternoon sun.
But it’s not over yet. I’m just running myself a bath and planning an early night when the phone rings. It’s Ester. "So tonight we go to the area around Puerto del Sol", she enthuses, "we’ll come by the hotel at 10". Did I hear somebody say: "Cut!"?
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