© 2011-2025
I am now a proud Madrid homeowner, post to tell what I think I know about buying a home in Spain (or in the capital, at least), and how the process compares to the equivalent in California. At the outset, I caution once more about plunking potential life savings on the counsel of a lone…
About Madrid buses I have remained mostly silent, despite this blog’s fetishistic name and despite many past gushes about Madrid’s rail network. Why? Blogger bias! Blogger emotional bias. I lived without wheels for over a decade in car-centric Los Angeles, may suffer a straphanger’s PTSD from so many occasionally torturous slogs in buses there, as…
I’m free to write an ‘Ode to the Prado‘ post — and eventually might, as I’m now a card-carrying Amigo¹, visit often — but Spain’s flagship art museum hardly needs publicity. Three and a half million visited the Prado in pre-pandemic 2019; a million more descended on the nearby Reina Sofía. These are world-famous bucket…
As photographed at the Príncipe Pío mall on December 26. I was surprised, too. Spain’s little ones see Santa on TV, explained one Madrileña, clamor pitilessly to lobby the Bearded One for merch east of the Atlantic, too. Still a relative novelty in Spain, and not uncontroversial. What was so terrible about waiting for gifts…
The blue-shirted innocent at lower right above is about to enter Madrid’s Alsacia station: second to the last on the eastern end of the metro 2 line, in the city’s un-touristy outskirts. Alsacia straphangers can expect weekday subways every three to five minutes for a twenty-six minute shlep to the Sol transit hub in Madrid’s…
5+ years in Spain, and I still marvel at Madrid’s subway like a first-time tourist. I sip tea out of a Madrid Metro coffee mug, festoon my refrigerator with Madrid Metro magnets, pay dues to Andén 1, a local enthusiast group, own their book about the metro and a thicker official history published by the…
Industrialization drove thousands of rural families into Spain’s big cities last century in search of money and work. The fictional story of one is told in Surcos, a 1951 neo-realist film that chronicles the grim disintegration of the Pérez clan amid the temptations and shams of a heartless Madrid. A local screenwriter told me about…
Almost three years since my last installment! I again offer my advanced age as an excuse, lament that I never thought to employ this dodge for late homework assignments in fifth grade. FAMILY TIES … … strike me as sturdier here than in the U.S. Many Spaniards live unselfconsciously with their parents into their late…
Ironically, the Madrid Metro I ride during the pandemic is the best I have used since my move here in 2016. Some travelers fear the subway now, have sought alternatives. Public transit ridership in Spain fell forty percent this summer; sales of polluting old cars rose. I reap a dividend: the commuter now gridlocked on…
Once a week I shop. This is the only time I leave the building during the coronavirus quarantine in Madrid, practically the only time I leave my apartment. If I have to tote trash and recycling to the bins by the stairs I hold my breath until I’m back in the apartment with the door…