MADRID IN PEACE TIME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 10

MADRID IN PEACE TIME

Transformed in Five Years

With Madrid in their grip, General Franco’s forces now hold the heart of Spain. One of the first acts of vandalism of the Civil War was the dynamiting by Government militiamen of a massive religious monument, on the Hill of the Angels, that marked the precise geographical centre of the country. It was ©ot a great work of art. but neither was its destruction a necessary measure of defence. Madrid, the most arbitrarily placedQi European capitals, is more than just the capital of the country; its position In almost the exact centre of the Peninsula is more than a caprice. Although It lacks the history and tradition ot Other cities that have served at various times as capitals of Spain, in a land of difficult and tardy communications Madrid has a practical advantage over her ©lder rivals and and over distant Barce lona. The little town that had been the liajerit of the Moors was chosen by Phillip 11. to be the heart of his Empire, the Mecca and the home of Spaniards, Who have a firm and inherent faith in Symbol. Madrid is the symbol of the Castilian hegemony, the vital core ot a united >pain. Inevitably, the Spanish Nationalists have longed for ils capture —or, as their spokesmen at Burgos would say, its release. Those who know Madrid will pray that from a nightmare of murder she tray awake and, before very long, recover her usual serene and friendly •mile of confidence. Madrid is not a beautiful city; a dozen Spanish towns are finer; but none is so typical of Spain, or so pleasant a place in which to live. Denied by Nature almost every Suitable condition for a metropolis, set A,310 feet above sea-level in a ‘‘dusty, treeless waste” on the once sandy, now toncrete banks of the insignificant Mantanares, Madrid usually makes an unfavourable tits* inipn-s>io’, on the •t ranger. Little is leu »i tuv "’Did Madrid’ •vhich he expects to see; the handsome facades of two churches in the wide taaiu street, the Calle Alcala, bordered t>y trees, may please his eye as he sits •t one of the innumerable cafes on I those broad pavements, dint for the his foric Plaza Mayor, Goya’s delightful fan Antonio, the baroque Hospicio gate Ind San Isidro he must diligently •earch outside the crowded rompass ot the town’s main thorough fares. Even *he restaurants appear to be deliberately hidd’en from the passer-by. The famous i*u« r'..t del Sol, truly a feircus in everything but shape, is as •nprepossessing as Piccadilly; perhaps that will explain its claim »*n the af Sections of the madrilenos, who are blessed, in common with the inhabitants •I all great capitals, with a caustic. Cheerful, salutary wit. akin to Cucknev Rumour.

The many admirable buildings in the style of Charles 111., pallid in the strong sunshine, are easily overlooked beside their towering exotic neighbours, the existence of which in a Spanish city on t wide and empty plateau seems a sign of merest vanity. Yet to the royal ar- • hiteci who reformed a capital which was the dirtiest in Europe at the time and “like a child, objected to being scrubbed,” as he remarked, w’e ow T e an essential part of the city’s odd and wistful charm. It is true, however, that the noisy central streets, the clustering tramcars, yellow as bananas, the fantastic archiectural stalagmites of a city that, in live short years, sprang full-grown into modern life produce on first acquaintance a bewilderment that only later, with familiarity, gives place to something not i.niike devotion. Mr Hemingway has best described this fondness of the true Hispanophile for Madrid, “capital of all the Spains” it has that essence, he says, which, • when it is the essence, can be in a plain glass bottle” with no need for fancy labels; “nor in Madrid do you need any national costumes: no matter what sort of building they put up, though the building itself may look like Buenos Aires, when you see it against that sky you know it is Madrid.” In the cities men have built up all that is left of the variety of Nature are the changing light ami (lie colouring of the leaves. Every country possesses its own indefinable quality of light; the crisp, luminous, empty air of Madrid is unique, because the sky of Castile is infinitely high, farther than any sky above our reach. Remote and clear on those told days when that little wind blows from the Guadarramas which •‘cannot put out a candle but will extinguish a human life,” it is a tender and exquisite sky in spring, and in autumn filled with the deep nostalgia of Castile. As we write tnere is happiness al least in the reflection that, whatever damage and misery may have been visit ed on Madrid, the ineffable serenity of that sky will remain unchanging, above a changed and, let us hope, less turbulent Spain.

Not long ago, custom, tailors, unknown to their customers, use# to sew a piece of white thread m a concealed place in each new suit as an indication that the buyer had not yet paid for it. Thus they warned one another when to be chary with credit. When the bill was paid, however, they borrowed the suit for a moment on some slight pretext, and removed the telltale thread.—ln Fre-ing Foster’s column in “Collier’s”.