Madrid is a shameless. A city that flees with dissimulous with the excuse of not being from anyone. It is not. What I like most about this city is the bad thing that hides its defects. He does not, He doesn't want to. It is not for pride, It is for indifference to anything other than living. Madrid is the street, It is sidewalks in which the trees are washed.
Not, It is no longer the city of the movement, That air bacana in which the sheets were shook on Tuesdays on the balconies to remove the smell of lacquer and naphthalin of the long weekend. It also smelled urinal and bulk wine that was mixed in neighborhood wineries. We lack hungry to be those of the time. The move was hungry for everything. Our hunger and sorrows are now arcades and clears. In Madrid they no longer premiere neons as in my adolescence of the 80, Now bars and restaurants are opened where the Crystals are erased. Before it was the smoke from black tobacco that did not show your barracks in the roughs.
We lack hungry to be those of the time. The move was hungry for everything
Our hunger became a bit to accommodate complaints between traffic lights and line. A bit, Just a little. Much less than other capitals that have become the same repeated city and where the only thing that changes is the accent with which the club's goalkeeper closes your throat and door when it begins to dusk. Comfort arrived and now the music groups do not draw the drums before going out for a group of teenagers who denied the conditional at their private school.
Madrid, nevertheless, Despite so much agorero that always accommodates in the best past, keeps part of its essence. True nostalgia is projected in after. I understand now that I am an exile who returned to my city and the way with the lost eyes of the tourist who grew up among the sad chestnuts of the winter of retirement and the cinemas in my neighborhood that were already closing and became a refuge of Yonquis who bit their veins.
Almost four and a half years ago I left Madrid. I made it tired, Without looking back. It was boredom more than resentment. Madrid was no longer my place. In the queues to fit my car in my Pacific neighborhood I was going through my life with the feeling that there was sure that there was something better to be to waste time. And the best, which is always relative, arrived with force not for quality but by quantity. The first hundred times in a new place the traffic jams are waiting for you to go slowly so as not to pass your exit.
I spent my life with the feeling that surely there was something better outside
And now I arrive in Madrid and walk through the center with an attentive look at the details. With the words of foreigners who told me there where I come from that "Madrid has a superb architecture", that "they hallucinated with their authentic personality" or that "they especially liked the old taverns".
And with those words I remember my last walk through my city. I left Ciudad de Barcelona avenue to the Atocha station and there I headed the Paseo del Prado to previous. And then I looked at some old tile bars that still remain through the city where the old spuits beer to remember when there were smoking on the squid snacks. And then I got through Neptune and Calleje by orchards where the day it is true that he has eaten the night to bless their neighbors and alarm of the crapulas with insomnia who like to fuck the early mornings of the others.
And some bars did not change their name since he had 15 years, that I studied in the area and got me drunk with bottles of water with gas and some of beer with the boy's manhood that coughs behind each drink. They maintain these places that unforgettable smell in which the kitchen oil was mixed with male dandy. Other, however, They now smell like old candle wax, Mirrors with broken frames of gold bread and old sofas perfectly placed to show that they opened tomorrow.
There must be more statues on the roof of Madrid than on the ground
And walked and walked looking at the sky, That sky of Madrid that Julio Llamazares so well describes in a work of the same name, and under the one that decipher the cornices and luster roofs that accumulate in the streets. There must be more statues on the roof of Madrid than on the ground. And the tourist who looked to be contemplated as I never contemplated them. With avidness and amazement remembering those words that my Madrid is stately where he does not look.
And then the night came. And lost by Malasaña and Chueca we were going and my friend Juancho walking between whores, Former patriars who have less money here we call them immigrants, Nostalgic urban tribes, Cool people who disguise them as not to dissent in their excesses, gay and lesbians who kiss in freedom not fictitious, Executives and officers and, even, I think I remember that even a disconcerting troupe of journalists, unemployed and trapezists who were my best friends ... and I was proud that that was the place where I come. That mixture without stridency or appearances. Everyone fit without having to show credentials there/here despite what press holders and politicians say. Madrid was always above all who tried to tame her.
Journalists, unemployed and trapezistas who were my best friends
That's what I like most about Madrid. It is authentic. Here the Chinese, Indians and Senegalese are called Pepe or Li Yin, without anyone forcing them to move the hair stripe or the essence of the face. And as in acceptance there is no rebellion, Well, they place their stores and bars in the same style as Mrs. Luisa, that makes 315 Years Regenta La Mería de Al Edo, Because no one has made them feel that to belong to the city they must modify to the underwear of their dead. Madrid does not deserve, No one is needed, Madrid is suffered and enjoyed, which is already a lot in these times when the planet is knocked out of knowing that poverty was for everyone and seeks to protect and differentiate themselves from others raising fences and borders.
The fears, Always fears. And yesterday, Always yesterday. And Madrid continues, keep it up, even with more tired rhythm. It is true that he reduced their crazy walk and that even politicians insist on bedtime so that each other does not place their curriculum on a sign on an outskirts street. But it doesn't work, Because in the neighborhood bars his smokes behind the gates and the music continues to play until high in the dirtiest coffee shops in the city. Those where whiskey is served in high glass and with three ice.
The whiskey is served in high glass and with three ice
that's my city, Madrid, the city in which the others do not exist. The city that never waits for me. Needless, is always open. I never understood my city better than now that I'm gone. I never felt that so much of his blood ran in my veins. I get it now that I know I like you because the last thing you want is to be perfect.. You are not. You are old, new, bitch, fun, beautiful and ugly.
