This morning I walked through near-empty streets until I reached the Puerta del Sol, Gateway of the Sun, which sits in the very heart of Madrid. I stood at the centre of the square and looked around the huge, deserted space as the sky grew light above me. By my feet, a stone slab proclaimed in large, gold letters that this was “Kilometre 0” – the geographical centre of the country and the exact point from which all roads are measured. This makes perfect sense to me. In Spain, all roads lead to the sun.
They say that in Madrid there are only two seasons: invierno y infierno – winter and hell. The months of July and August regularly reach 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), and the nearly 13 hours of daily sunlight can feel stifling. Many Madrileños have a long-standing tradition of packing up their families and going to their casas de campo, their houses in the country, or a few months around this time. Meanwhile the city centre is a sweaty mess, empty but for tourists and swifts. But while the swifts are generally welcome – their darting shapes flitter between buildings – the tourists are less so.
I live in La Latina, the very centre of old town Madrid. The ancient Moorish wall is a stone’s throw away. It’s one of those neighbourhoods that thrums with local life and colour. Or it was. Lately a plague has been creeping in, a plague that goes by many names – Airbnb, fast tourism, gentrification. Many Madrilenians now have little to no chance of renting a place in the barrio where they grew up. And the culprits are everyone from digital nomads, to exchange students and people wanting a cheap, fun-filled holiday in another person’s home.
The problem is not unique to Madrid. Recent years have seen huge protests in many European cities, from Amsterdam to Venice and Dubrovnik, against this out-of-control tourism. On my walk home I spot several “F*ckAirbnb” stickers, and a poster telling me the local pool attendants are on strike. Close to my flat I pass a wall with the words “Tourists Go Home” written in large, angry letters across a wall. Underneath someone has scrawled, in much softer handwriting: “But my heart sings here.”
I know how they feel. Back at the flat, I sit at the third-floor balcony and watch my neighbour on the balcony opposite. He takes long, elegant drags of his cigarette and strums a Spanish guitar. Between peals of earthy flamenco, smoke rises from his lips. The afternoon passes in a haze of music and sleep. It’s too hot to work. Too hot to eat. Too hot to do anything but siesta.
On the ground floor of our building is the neighbourhood bookshop. Almost every barrio has one, but ours is particularly bohemian. Usually it doesn’t open until 6 PM, then it stays open until two, sometimes three in the morning. As for bars, they’re everywhere – Spain has more bars than the rest of Western Europe put together. They’re all quiet now, of course, but come sundown they’ll be teeming. Vermouth is the drink of choice for the modern Madrilenian, served on tap, and with plenty of ice. Every drink comes with a snack, a free tapa – literally a ‘top’ to line your stomach before you fill it with booze. And once the drinks are flowing, the conversation begins.
The Spanish are expert conversationalists. I don’t mean they’re wittier or more eloquent than other nations – though they have their moments – I simply mean that they adore talking. About everything and anything, all the time. Once, at the pool, I observed two middle-aged men carry out a full-blown conversation while doing the backstroke. It may sound absurd, and in many ways, it is. But it’s also wonderful – yet another sign of the high value the Spanish place on good company and pleasant society. But while the conversation may be copious and charming, it can sometimes feel shallow. It’s well-known that in Spain, some things are never spoken aloud.
They call it El Pacto del Olvido, the pact of forgetfulness. It refers to the Spanish reluctance to acknowledge its difficult and bloody history. The dictator Franco died almost 50 years ago, and the echoes of his right-wing, hard-Catholic mentality are still very present across the land. Everywhere you turn in Madrid you’ll find another church, or a police station, or a monument to the royalty. And there’s a strong sense of pride in these things. But nobody wants to talk about Franco’s victims, the tens of thousands who were murdered in the night, and now lie in unmarked graves up and down the country.
At the same time, the end of the dictatorship brought with it a zealous embrace of far-left ideas and freedoms. Spain now boasts some of the most liberal laws in the world. It was the first country in Europe to introduce so-called “menstrual leave” – giving women who suffer difficult periods a paid holiday of between three and five days every month. Then there’s the famous ley trans – the trans law, which allows any citizen to legally change their gender with minimal intervention or disruption. Madrid is also considered one of the gay capitals of Europe, with roughly ten percent of the city identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Impressive, for a country that literally invented the word “macho.”
As evening settles in, I reflect on the nature of this place. From beyond my balcony, the city comes alive with laughter and conversation and song. And I think yes, Spain is still a divided country. But maybe, just maybe, the existence of these two ideologies, far-right and hard-left, both followed with passionate zeal in the last half-century, have somehow diluted each other. Like the red wine and sweet lemonade of the famed Tinto de Verano, they mix together to create something altogether smoother: a philosophy of good cheer and good company, to be enjoyed, always, in the sun.