Madrid

More great Spanish architecture in Madrid

In case you missed us on the international news feeds, we are running from the police.  After stepping outside of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid where we had spent much of the day, we find ourselves in the midst of several-thousand Spaniards protesting the economic austerity measures imposed by the government.  We are running because they are running, and we don’t want to get trampled.  Turns out the police are firing rubber bullets into the front of the crowd.  At least a dozen people are injured and 20 arrested during a protest that looked to be completely peaceful and well-mannered.  We enjoy a beer provided by a local entrepreneur while strolling through the scene and escape unscathed. 

Enjoying a beer at the Protest

Gathering crowds and police

Our first inkling that something unusual was going on was when we walked from our hotel in the center of Madrid to the museum.  There were police everywhere.  This was a well-organized protest scheduled to begin in the early evening at the Parliament building next to the museum.  We heard the crowd building throughout the day from inside the museum while the staff anxiously looked outside.  People here are pissed off at the government’s handling of the economy as it threatens their well-being.  These protests are going on in Spain, Portugal and Greece at the moment.  Because of the global nature of today’s economies, if Spain’s economy tanks the European Union and euro are negatively impacted.  Investor confidence worldwide suffers and that provides us both opportunities and challenges.  From my perspective, the root cause also emphasizes the ills associated with economies featuring too much of a socialist agenda.  The lifestyle here is phenomenal, but the work ethic is not. 

All that excitement apparently got my nympho wife worked up, as she abuses me for hours that night.  This could be a short marriage if she ends up killing me in bed.



 

Boy in a Turban by Sweerts

The Thyseen-Bornemisza museum is the best art museum I have ever visited, or should I say it most appeals to my taste in art.  Previously, I would have awarded that honor to the Louvre in Paris, Barnes Foundation collection in Philadelphia or the Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford Pennsylvania, but the formerly private collection at the Thyseen-Bornemisza museum sets it apart.  In just one of the numerous small rooms that house this collection there are masterpieces by Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Whistler.  The next room features Degas, Gauguin, Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec.  All are among my favorite artists and they represent only a smattering of those represented in this massive, eclectic collection.  Outstanding pieces are on display from virtually every period of painting, starting with Classicism around the birth of Christ and the Renaissance periods (1200's-1500's) up through Pop Art.  One of the pieces we encounter, Michael Sweerts painting The Boy in a Turban from 1655, is so lifelike that it looks like a photograph.  I stare at it for at least 10 minutes.  Much like the Mona Lisa, you can't appreciate the mesmerizing light and detail that these paintings radiate unless you seem them in person.  Photographs like on this blog simply can't capture their magnificence.  

The museum has a great system to generate high quality reproductions on the spot of all their paintings, so I buy my son Colin a couple of them (Van Gogh, Bosch) for his new apartment in Portland. 

Heironymous Bosch's view of Hell.  Print I bought my son Colin

From what I can glean, old man Thyseen was a prominent Spanish industrialist and art collector with Nazi leanings.  His son continued the collection after the war and eventually sold it to the city of Madrid who outbid ($350 million) the Getty Foundation for the rights to it in 1993 .  The collection is worth at least three times that today.  Other than music and nature, there is little that stirs the soul like great art.  This museum is sumptuous; I wish it were closer to where I live.

Museo del Prado and Babe

Descent of Christ by Weyden

Earlier in the week we had visited the Museo del Prado art museum.  It is even more famous due to its collection of classical painting and sculpture dating from 130 BC.  This museum features art by Bosch, Velazquez, de Goya, Caravaggio, Rembrandt and El Greco to name a few.  I particularly like the masterpiece painted in 1435 by Roger van der Weyden, Descent of Christ from the Cross.  It is stunning.  Although this mostly religious collection of paintings is not what most appeals to my sense of taste (endless paintings of Christ nailed to the cross by people who weren’t there), the artistry is undeniable and we both feel honored to see it so well displayed.  Both of these museums are a must see for art lovers.

This matador gets badly gored two minutes after this photo was taken

Notice the horse is completely blindfolded.  Good idea!

We spent four nights in Madrid.  Our first night Michael Vick would have been proud of us: we went to a bullfight at the main Plaza De Toros.  It was quite an event.  Six bulls get the honor of dying in front of the enthusiastic crowd.  After a couple of fights I am waiting for them to trot out the Christians and lions for some real blood sport, but no such luck.  Make no mistake, this is a dangerous sport.  The first matador we watch gets badly gored near the end of the match.  He takes a horn through one of his thighs and either his chest or upper arm; hard to tell from where we sit.  The matador gamely hangs on inside the ring while his compatriots finish off the bull, then he is carried swiftly to a waiting ambulance.  We don’t learn what became of him, but he lost a lot of blood and was unconscious as he left the ring.  I had seen a gruesome photo on the web from a bullfight earlier this year.  It showed one of Spain’s famous bullfighters with a bull’s horn coming out of his eye socket after the bull gored him up through the throat.  Of the six fights we watch, the bull gets a shot in on one of the human participants in three of them.  One bull decides it doesn’t want to fight so a bunch of tame oxen with bells around their necks are let into the ring in order to retrieve the conscientious-objector bull peacefully.  This elicits laughs throughout the arena.  Best guess is that bull still headed to dinner plates around Madrid as is the case with the other bulls.

Headed for the dinner tables of Madrid

There is a ritualized protocol that is followed in these fights.  Somehow they manage to piss the bull off before it enters the ring (probably an electric prod applied to the nuts).  The bull charges in looking for something to kill and makes a beeline straight away to anyone holding a cape.  That goes on for awhile until a heavily armored horse enters carrying a picadores with a long lance.  The bull does its best to gore the horse while the picadores on top stabs the bull with his long lance.  Prior to 1930 the horses didn’t wear the protective armor and were invariably disemboweled by the bulls, resulting in the loss of more horses than bulls during these fights.  It is worth noting that the horses are completely blindfolded; any horse with half a brain would say "fuck this" if it knew what was in store for it.  After lancing the bull, the attendant banderilleros come in to plant short, barbed sticks into the bull’s shoulders.  This helps weaken the animal and can reveal its favored side to the matador.  The main matador with his red cape then shows off his mastery before dispatching the bull with a single sword thrust down through the shoulders into the aorta.  Finally, the bull is pithed with a knife to the brain by one of the attendants and dragged from the ring.  At once horrific, noble, exciting and archaic; no way this happens in the States. 

Great art adorns the city

On our last night we go to a Flamenco performance at El Corral de la Morería, reputed to be the best place in Madrid to see such a show.  The dancing, a cross between tap dancing and pole dancing, is excellent.  So is the music which includes a great deal of rhythmic clapping.  I also now know where to find a job if I ever get throat cancer and can only croak out the sounds.  The male singers wail horribly.  Prior to the show we allow ourselves to be hustled off the street into a sidewalk restaurant by a handsome and charming maître d’.  The meal is excellent and he is very entertaining.  We watch him snare several unsuspecting groups of people into his establishment.  Everybody wins.

Main boulevard in the center of the city

Great parks & gardens throughout the city

Unlike Barcelona and València, finding someone who speaks English is much harder to come by in Madrid.  Even the young people speak little but Spanish.  Public transportation is again superb.  With their metro, train and bus infrastructure the Europeans are simply better at moving people than we are in the States.  There are scooters everywhere and the city is setup to accommodate them with parking.  It also helps that so many people live in the center of the cities we have visited.  The freeways between cities are excellent here but they see little traffic.  With gas prices running over $6.00 per gallon that is not surprising and the most common autos seem to be smaller, manual transmission vehicles that burn diesel.  Fortunately, our diesel burning rental car gets terrific mileage.

Candy store open at midnight

Notice size of elevator

Our “4-star” hotel here is tiny and located right in the center of the best area.  The walls are paper thin and we listen to the Spanish cunnilingus champion bang his girlfriend for half the night on our first night in the hotel.  If this is a 4-star hotel than the Motel 6 we stayed in outside of Glacier National Park is a 5-star hotel.  The elevator is so small that we can all only laugh when two large, black American women attempt to join me in it.  

Madrid is regal, fully Spanish and proud of it.  Like the other cities we have visited in Spain, it is easy to walk and full of surprises.  The street hustlers are entertainers, their creativity fully on display at the Plaza Sol.  The city is full of beautiful gardens, majestic buildings and great art.  Our days are spent wandering the city, stopping in for a bite at the Ritz, sampling the exquisite food at the numerous tapas bars that surround the Plaza Mayor.  This is a city that just starts to come alive after 8:00 PM, and many of the restaurants don’t even open for dinner until then.  We find ourselves returning to our hotel after 1:00 AM every night.  Most of the shops are still open and we don’t ever feel threatened walking around that late.  This is one of the world’s greatest cities; right up there with London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong.