keeping it real

The Penthouse rooftop bar in the top tower, left, of the ME hotel, overlooks Plaza de Santa Ana in Madrid’s lively Huertas region

REDISCOVER MADRID Madrid resident and Lonely Planet guidebook author Anthony Ham shows you how to experience the city like a local – by seizing the day and making a night out last until dawn

Photographs RODERICK FIELD

The Spanish capital may end up being many travellers’ favourite European city, but just as many visitors leave frustrated, as if they’ve been invited to a party but have remained on the outside, looking in. The key to moving from spectator to participant lies in immersing yourself in the city’s barrios (neighbourhoods). These barrios, each with its own personality, are where Madrileños (people from Madrid) live and play, often a stone’s-throw – yet at the same time a world away – from the Madrid that most tourists encounter. The district of La Latina is a fusion of tradition and innovation grafted onto the city’s oldest barrio, while nearby Huertas provides a nightly soundtrack that reverberates out across the city. The Parque del Buen is a green haven from city life, and Chamberí is a bastion of old-style barrio living. Finally, Chueca is where Madrid gets up-close and personal: you’ll leave here feeling like a privileged initiate into one eclectic city secret after another.

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particular, a regular in a beret, can often be seen nursing a late-morning glass of cognac. Small children tumble out into

2 the plaza’s playgrounds, filling the air with excited chatter while the elders mutter their approval. It is then that Plaza de Olavide looks and sounds for all the world like a village square in rural . By night, the plaza’s soundtrack 1 increases in volume as the focal point shifts to the outdoor tables of the barrio’s bars. When the weather’s fine, Chamberí’s regular flute and saxophone ensemble plays and the euphoria of the Madrid night takes hold. Inside one of these bars, Bar Méntrida (1), you’ll find a stirring photographic record of the plaza’s history. Northeast of the plaza, on Calle de Santa Chamberí Engracia, I leave a typically busy Madrid best for a glimpse footpath, step behind the extravagantly of Old Spain tiled façade of another iconic Chamberí bar, Bodega de la Ardosa (2), and into hen I first moved to Madrid another world. Opened in 1919 as a bodega and was looking for a place (wine cellar), La Ardosa has been left to live, my instructions to largely unchanged in the years since. ‘See Don Herrero, the Anglo- those small holes in the tilework?’ asks Spanish owner of a local José Martínez, the bar’s owner, who has accommodationW service, were simple: worked here since 1953. ‘They’re shrapnel I want to be downtown. ‘Actually, you marks from a bomb that exploded nearby don’t,’ he replied. ‘You want to live in during the Civil War in the 1930s.’ Chamberí. Live downtown and you’ll In contrast to its stunning façade, La always feel like a tourist. Live in Chamberí Ardosa’s walls are adorned with tiles of and you’ll be a local in no time.’ the kind that graced the bathroom of many ‘la latina is one of spain’s elite As I left behind central Madrid’s tangle a Spanish abuela circa-1965. Bottles of sometimes claustrophobic streets to see gathering dust line the shelves and barrio tapas barrios. every person you what he meant, I had the sensation of being old-timers and young local workers able to breathe more freely: the streets were wander in and out, oblivious to the paper meet is a passionate defender of wider and life appeared to slow down. napkins strewn on the floor. Plaza de Olavide is the green hub of ‘I am now onto my fourth generation of their favourite tapas haunt’ Chamberí life, a symbol of a barrio where clients,’ José tells me as he prepares a meal High cuisine in miniature: people remember your name. Here, old of patatas bravas and vermouth-on-tap, the Txakolina in La Latina is the men and women in their Sunday best house specialities. ‘Look around you,’ he locals’ favourite for tapas shuffle to park benches to pass a morning says. ‘The people who come in here are gossiping in the shade. One elderly gent in like a cross-section of Madrid life.’

La Latina and, seemingly with one voice, order among Madrileños for a tortilla that wasn’t Morning in Plaza de huevos rotos. Thereafter they retire to rest cooked by their abuelas (grandmothers). Olavide, the hub of best for adventures Chamberí, where Madrid said elbows on the upturned barrels and ‘It’s all about the right combination and life takes on a more in tapas eat their dish with the greatest satisfaction. a mix of tastes,’ César continues. ‘And relaxed, local feel et’s start with the basics. A If first appearances are anything to go by, it helps if it looks like a work of art.’ timeworn adage of Spanish cooking they take a radically different approach to Calle de la Cava Baja is where La Latina 1 3 holds that the key to culinary tapas at Juana la Loca (2). All along the bar, truly arrives as one of Spain’s elite tapas excellence lies in taking the best gulas (baby eels) cascade from vivid barrios. Every person you meet along this 2 Lingredients and interfering with lime-green spinach crêpes, and long street is a passionate defender of his or her them as little as possible. It’s a philosophy shavings of courgettes wrap delicately favourite tapas haunt. But a consensus adhered to by Almendro 13 (1), where you around cod, tiny red peppers and onion. finally builds aroundT xakolina (3), a can eat like a king – if the king in question ‘The secret of good tapas is balance,’ says Basque place with walls of discarded wine is, like Spain’s Juan Carlos I, a man of César, the barman. ‘It doesn’t have to be too cartons. The bar’s motto is ‘high cuisine uncomplicated tastes. Its speciality, and complicated.’ To illustrate his point, he in miniature’. ‘I’m eating my way along the king’s favourite, is the simple huevos suggests I try Juana la Loca’s signature, the street,’ says Paco, as we wait to shout rotos (broken eggs) – a fried egg atop potato tortilla de patatas (potato omelette). By our order. ‘The problem is that by the time slices and Spanish ham. caramelising the onions, nothing more, I get to the end, I’ll have to start all over Perched on a low wooden stool, I watch Juana la Loca’s chefs have achieved that again because, by then, they’ll all be

as Madrileños elbow their way to the bar rare miracle – developing a following C rus h/ a g enc y h. com MAP ILLUSTRATIONS: doing something new.’

92 August 2009 Xyxyxyxy 2009 5 xyxyxyxyxyxyxy The view east from The keeping it real Penthouse bar in Plaza de Santa Ana. Left: night-time flamenco in the square

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Huertas best for ‘killing the night’ Above: an avant-gard shop-front display in Chueca; the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores urely it was Huertas that Ernest Hemingway had in mind when he ‘the noise from huertas at night crackles across the wrote that ‘Nobody goes to bed in Moriarty (1), a private gallery whose Madrid until they have killed the history is Chueca’s story in microcosm. In city like the clamour of an approaching storm’ night.’ The noise from Huertas the 1980s, Galería Moriarty was the eye of Sat night crackles across the city like the 2 la movida’s storm, hosting wild soirees for clamour of an approaching storm, and Spain’s emerging cultural elite, among watching the day break over the barrio’s 3 them Antonio Banderas and Pedro Plaza de Santa Ana is something of a Almodóvar. ‘Back then, we had no sense of Madrid rite of passage. If, at that moment, ‘THheigh view cuisine east in from miniature’: The the future,’ Lola Moriarty, the gallery’s you happen to find yourself outside the TPenthousexakolina in bar La inLatina Plaza1 is de the founder and director, tells me. ‘But we’ve locals’Santa A favouritena. Left: nighttimefor tapas Villa Rosa nightclub (1), you’ll wonder if flamenco in the square all grown older and life changes. The you’ve strayed into the craziness of a Pedro gallery, and Chueca itself, are no different. Almodóvar film: Villa Rosa appears in What hasn’t changed is that we like to find Tacones Lejanos (High Heels). the next new thing and do it with style.’ ‘The real Huertas is about small bars Down the hill to the east, Chueca segues where you can stay up talking until 6am,’ into its most exclusive corner, with an Marian, a longstanding resident of ambience that has been likened to New Huertas, tells me. ‘It’s been like that for York’s SoHo. Calle del Almirante, one of almost 30 years, ever since the rebuilding Madrid’s most prestigious thoroughfares, of the Teatro Español, which brought so Chueca is lined with the kind of personalised, much cultural energy back into the barrio.’ best for uncovering individual boutiques that every shopper Much of that energy comes from hidden treasure dreams of finding in a foreign city. Further Huertas’s live music scene, and it’s the north, especially along Calle Argensola riffing sound of jazz that is the barrio’s hueca is Madrid’s rebellious and Calle Justiniano, you’ll find more true mark of musical distinction. In Café teen that grew up and got stylish. galleries, boutiques, and even some Central (2), on Calle de las Huertas, serious In the 1980s, Chueca surrendered surprising architectural flourishes. aficionados nod in time to the blend of to ‘la movida Madrileña’, the At Calle Orellana 5 (2), the elegant classic and Latin jazz (Madrid’s been one city’s decade-long cultural wrought-iron balconies that are a barrio of Europe’s jazz capitals since the 1920s). C awakening and celebration of Spain’s trademark are offset by graffiti works of art. ‘Huertas and jazz are the perfect mix,’ post-dictatorship freedom. At the time, And just down the hill lies Madrid’s most explains Umberto, the barman at Jazz Bar The New York Times dubbed Madrid ‘the striking architectural confection, the (3), in the lower reaches of Huertas’s Barrio cultural capital of the world’. Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (3). of Letters. ‘This barrio has a very free spirit.’ And when the party ran its course, Evoking clotted cream in the process of I make for The Penthouse (4), a seventh- the young professionals of Madrid’s gay melting, it’s a decadent, early-19-century floor rooftop bar with ‘the best night-time community moved in, transforming ode to Modernismo and proof that Chueca views in Madrid’. Sipping a mojito under Chueca from a neglected inner-city space has always been where Madrid’s artistic the stars and watching the post-midnight into one of the city’s most stylish, most experiments endure. crowds down below, I find myself wishing culture-conscious barrios. You’ll find the Back at Galería Moriarty, Lola makes the night will never end. And I know that majority of Madrid’s private contemporary it clear that her gallery’s location is no in Huertas, it probably won’t. art galleries here – the perfect complement accident. ‘Chueca is where you find As I leave the bar, I run into Marian and to the grand public galleries that have the pulse of the city. My philosophy suddenly feel the need to ask: is it possible made Madrid an art lovers’ paradise. for the gallery reflects how I see Madrid, to sleep in Huertas? She smiles. ‘Only if Walking along Chueca’s narrow Calle and Chueca in particular: it opens its The tiled facade of the Villa Rosa you must,’ comes her enigmatic reply. de la Libertad, it’s easy to miss Galería arms, but never closes them.’ nightclub in the buzzing barrio of Huerta. The club appeared in Pedro Almodóvar’s6 Tacones LejanosXyxyxyxy 2009 August 2009 95 Madrileños escape the MADRIDkeeping REDISCOV it realERED bustle at the verdant barrio of El Retiro. Opposite: the de Cristal captures El Retiro’s sense of light and space

‘el retiro is the smell of freshly cut grass and sunlight streaming through the waters of the park’s fountains’

ordinary Madrileños who converge on ‘That’s all well and good,’ says Dulce the park’s lake at weekends. But El Retiro Moreno, a park worker, ‘but don’t miss the 1 is, above all, about finding a hidden corner Jardín de los Planteles (6). It’s an oasis to call your own. within an oasis, but no-one seems to know Begin in the northeastern corner of the it’s here. I come here, especially in summer, 2 park at the Romanesque Ermita de San because it feels like a secret garden.’ Isidoro (1), a supremely graceful 11th- I know what she means – the heavily 8 century sandstone hermitage with trees wooded byways, closed off from the outside sprouting amid its ruins. When it was world, are enlivened only by birdsong from 7 built, the outskirts of Madrid were almost the expansive canopy. Nearby, the 1.5 miles away. South of here, amid exceptional Palacio de Cristal (7), an 6 sculpted hedgerows and wandering indulgent 19th-century iron-and-glass 5 4 peacocks, La Casa de Fieras (2), Madrid’s pavilion, perfectly captures El Retiro’s 3 former zoo, was once home to the same sense of light and space. Stumbling upon it camels that played a starring role in through the trees feels like discovering a Lawrence of Arabia. monument to a lost civilisation. Madrid makes a habit of juxtaposing the Away to the northwest, just inside the devilish with the divine, but rarely do they Puerta de Felipe IV, stands Madrid’s oldest El Retiro coexist in such proximity as they do in tree (8), a Mexican conifer (ahuehuete). best for getting lost El Retiro. Tucked away in the park’s far Planted in 1633 and with a trunk in a green oasis southeastern extremity, the Puerta de Dante circumference of 52m, it survived the (3) is fronted by an intense mural from Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century onumental and manicured, Dante’s Inferno. A mere 100m up the hill because French soldiers used its branches informal and infused with to the northwest is La Rosaleda (4), El as a cannon mount. welcoming open spaces, Retiro’s immaculate rose garden, awash For all El Retiro’s verdant tranquillity, the Parque del Buen Retiro, with more than 4,000 roses. Close by, even this stately park cannot resist giving El Retiro to its friends, is where there’s eternal damnation brought to life in in to Madrid’s fun-loving vibe. On Sunday MMadrileños come to seek sanctuary from the form of the Fuente del Ángel Caído (5) afternoons music rolls out across the the city. El Retiro is the smell of freshly (the Fountain of the Fallen Angel) where park as the drum circles kick off their cut grass and sunlight streaming through Lucifer descends to hell. Rumour has it the traditional alfresco party east of the lake. the waters of the park’s fountains. It is statue sits exactly 666m above sea level. And there, Madrileños dance like there’s the street musicians, fortune-tellers and Make of it what you will. no tomorrow. LP

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