Saturday, 10 April, early evening in the bustling central station of Madrid, Estación Atocha, located in one of the busiest districts in the downtown area. I am in Spain for my Easter break as now I live in Manchester, England. I am not in this country looking for sun and leisure, or to indulge in some decent food such as my favourites cocido (a stew made of chickpeas and meat, a typical dish from Madrid) or a seafood garnished paella, as my English friends always tell me I should do when I go to Spain.
Rather, I just want to have some time with my family and friends and enjoy myself without the exhausting demands of recreational travel. Prior to arriving in Madrid, I travelled to the south of Spain, Seville and Cordoba, where it is customary in my family to gather during the Easter break, but coming to Madrid today holds special meaning.
First, I have a feeling of nostalgia as I look through the window of my second-class carriage. There are some distinctive features about this city; one is simply the Madridian sky in the vital springtime. It is a wide, clear sky only darkened occasionally today with some passing clouds. While growing up in Madrid I never thought its sky was anything extraordinary, but having since lived abroad for 14 years of my life in cloudy Great Britain, I am now fully aware of its influence.
My tip for somebody who visits this city in the spring season is to look up to this blue sky. It is like a fine curtain in the atmosphere, lightly embroidered with a few little clouds in the horizon. The suns rays shine through with a vigorous splendour. Photographers complain that in the bold natural light of this city colour timidly fades. Madrid’s lightness is an ironic feature for a city that lives the night with greater intensity than the day.
The other feeling that comes to me as I set foot upon familiar ground is grief. As I leave through the main entrance of this great and beautiful station, with its main hall converted into a greenhouse of tropical trees, I feel drawn to the other entrance, the one for the regional trains. Near this entrance flowers, candles, and emotional letters lay in homage to the 202 dead and 1,700 injured, victims of the “11 March ” bombings. So many people on a seemingly typical Thursday commute with no idea of where the mystery trains would take them.
Their next stop wasn’t Hope (as Manu Chao sings to us in Próxima Estación: Esperanza, “Next Station: Hope”) as probably any young passenger would have heard in his headphones from the very popular album of this French artist, so loved in Spain (the home country of Manu’s parents). For some, it was a one-way ticket to the “other side”. The bomb blasts of 11 March are Madrid’s equivalent to New York’s “September 11”.
It is not that Madrid hasn’t seen terrorism before. Madrid has been the arena for various terrorist actions, mainly instigated by the Basque Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), its tactics become more violent in the current democratic Spain than in the time of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. But now, in a time when the Basques have achieved their own parliament and their provinces are among the wealthiest of the country (and therefore the ETA eludes any comparison with the Irish Republican Army), Spanish people wonder why any Basque would still want to kill for his cause.
It is true that in the time under Franco there was a certain sentiment of affinity among some groups of the Spanish left wing and the Basque nationalists, as when, in December 1973, ETA assassinated the Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid with a calculated bomb. This was two years before Franco’s death. For the Spanish left wing this killing was celebrated, as it meant that the strong political arm of the dictatorship had disappeared: the one who could have stopped the democratic transition after Franco’s death was no longer a problem.
However, Al Qaeda had never before committed a terrorist action on Spanish soil. It is likely that former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar’s alliance with the United States and United Kingdom in the Iraq war might have been the catalyst of the 11 March bombing of Madrid’s commuter trains. As a result of this brutal carnage, the general election, held three days afterward, changed the pro American government of the Popular party for the more European leaning, anti-Iraq war, Socialist party.
I catch a taxi outside the Estación Atocha. The cab drivers in Madrid like talking to their passengers and soon my driver, Sebastian, engages me in a conversation about 11 March. He was in the area when the seven bombs, some of them concealed in a backpack inside two of the cars, exploded. Witness to the magnitude of the tragedy, he, and many others driving in the area helped to carry some of the injured to the closest hospital.
Sebastian points to a stain on the back seat, just a few centimetres to the right of where I sit, “This is blood from one of the victims. I rubbed at it for hours but it doesn’t come out,” he says, his voice shaking. “My wife said that I should keep it to make my passengers remember how horrible it was, but I would rather change the upholstery. If you saw what I saw you don’t want to remember it.” We share an awkward moment of emotional silence. Shortly we drive by the Bernabeu Stadium, the Real Madrid football club home, and we change to more trivial talk about football.
Sebastian is a supporter of Real Madrid, the club that has won the most competitions in the Spanish league and garnered many trophies in the European champions tournament (a competition that reunited the European winners of their respective leagues), but he is not happy with this year’s performance. Real Madrid was knocked out of the European Championship after being defeated by Monaco. The dream team (or “Galacticos” as this team is called in Spain) that Real Madrid has obtained with the signing of some of the best players in the world, such as the English footballer and icon Beckham, the French Zidane, the Brazilians Ronaldo and Carlos, the Portuguese Figo, and the Spanish Raúl, have not lived up to their expectations. “They don’t deserve the many millions these footballers earn”, says Sebastian.
The Spanish obsession with football is probably the Spain’s feature most in common with Britain. For both countries, football is more than a sport it really is like a religion. The English supporters wear the colours of their teams any day of the week, game or not, as proof of complete devotion; while in Spain football is a passionate topic, often leading to loud arguments as fans watch their team playing on the television set hanging on the wall of a local bar. A football match between Real Madrid and Barcelona sets off many sparks between Spain’s two largest cities; the division a faithful reflection of the political tension between the central government and the autonomous government of Catalonia.
For some Spaniards, Real Madrid represents the team of the Central administration; Franco himself, and most of his cabinet, took a special liking to Real Madrid. The Real Madrid flag blends with the Spanish national flag as the Real Madrid supporters wave them. On the other hand, Barcelona is the team that most symbolizes the aspirations of the Catalan region, with Barcelona’s colourful flag blurring with the bicolour Catalan flag.
Sebastian lets me off at my flat, and I quickly call my long-time friend, Andres, to meet at our favourite hangout. I take the tube this time, definitely the fastest way to travel in this city with its crazy, busy traffic. As I arrive at our rendezvous, Andres and his girlfriend, Eva, wave to me from the back of the bar. La Via Lactea (“The Milky Way”) bar has long been an important place in my life and that of my friends. This music bar is where I used to DJ on Sundays before I moved abroad. La Via Lactea is located in the middle of the district of Malasaña in the downtown area of Madrid. This area was one of the epicentres of the “La Movida” years in the late ’70s and early ’80s (movida is a Spanish slang word to mean several things, including “movement”, “thing”, “scene” or “action”).
During the La Movida years, the bars in the Malasaña district played rock music until late hours, and venues providing live music had people lined up outside their doors, winding along the narrow streets. La Movida was a period of artistic effervescence and excitement, and it was certainly not exempt from exaggerated behavior and general craziness, as Madrid was in the throes of changing from the bureaucratic old town of Franco’s times to one of the most hedonistic places in Europe. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll were intrinsic to these explosive times. At last, the former grey administrative capital of Spain had lost its inhibitions.
It happened at the same time as the Punk revolution in England and the United States, which was the real musical catalyst of Spain’s teenage movement. Young Madridians were tuned to the happenings in London and New York, but Madrid’s long nightlife was the real background of this scene. It seemed that every night there was a new bar to discover, such as the emblematic Rockola (the Madridean equivalent to such important clubs in the New York musical scene as the CBGB or the London 100 Club), and the music bar “Penta” in the Malasaña district.