Madrid | Eurotrip 09

Dec

2008

Madrid

Written by Ro

We arrived in Madrid after an overnight change of trains in Irun, a Spanish town on the border. We took a couchette – a sort of sleeper class carriage separated into compartments of four bunk beds. It was quite a comfortable trip. Coming from Irun ment lots of mountain scenery and the train snaked its way through some quite breath-taking sights. Because of the speed we were travelling and the glare inside the cabin the pictures don’t quite do it justice.

In Madrid, we took the subway (laid out quite similarly to the Paris metro) to our accommodation, right next door to the House of Congress. That night we went out on a quest for Spanish tapas finding a local place that looked fairly upscale but had reasonable prices. We tried some small chipolata type sausages here made from local meats and a chocolate fondue with seasonal fruits.

We walked around the area which was adorned in Christmas decorations - which looked a lot like the Montmarte in Paris. We learned a lot about the history of Madrid in another short walking tour where the discussion was primarily dominated by Franco’s recent influence in Spain.

You can tell a lot from a person by the company he keeps – Franco was no exception, his ties to Hitler and Mussolini as well as his general suppression and big brother-esque control over the Spaniards were evidence to his character. Spain these days has just decided to forget the past and move on (literally signing a pact of forgetting) this meant that most people involved in the suppression and mass murders simply walked away.

Still out of this repression came the talents of greats such as Garcia Lorca a great Spanish playright whose statue stands infront of the opera house as a gift from the city of Madrd to the man who was persecuted for both his works and his homosexuality. Buried in a mass grave his body is unlikely to be found again. His statue serves as a symbol to represent as many as 3000 or more people who would've served the same fate under the Franco regime.

Still Spain is ever changing - the vibrancy erupting from Madrid seems to want to make up for many years of oppression. It is a country where the popularity of artists and royalty remain higher than that of sports stars and the traditions of the past (such as bullfighting) are increasingly being recognised for their cruelty. Modern day Spain is rapidly changing with the times which makes Madrid an exciting place to visit.

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