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Madrid’s most famous export is probably Real Madrid, one of the world’s richest and most successful football teams. Second in the fame stakes is Pedro Almodóvar, the unconventional film director who has become the toast of Hollywood since winning an Oscar in 2000 for Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother). If parts of Madrid seem strangely familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve seen them before in his films: from the sleaze of the Rastro flea market to the grand arcades of the Plaza Mayor, Madrid is as much a ’character’ in his work as his favourite actresses, ’las chicas de Almodóvar’, who regularly appear in his films. The Movida Madrileña was just getting into its stride when Almodóvar had his first commercial success with Pepi, Luci, Bom in 1980: the year before, Tierno Galván, a gentle, soft-spoken professor of Marxist philosophy, had been elected mayor of Madrid and culminated his address to the people with the now-legendary phrase ’You know what to do: get stoned and watch out!’ (Así es que ya sabéis: a colocarse y al loro!). Madrid knew exactly what to do, and for the next decade the city was the hottest, wildest and most creative in Europe – and Almodóvar was capturing its zeitgeist on film. Music, fashion, art and design flourished in the newly liberalized climate (film scripts had been censored until 1976 and the word ’thigh’ was banned from theatres) and the new socialist government poured money into the arts in its eagerness to redress the balance of the Franco years. The party was too intense to last and the cracks were already showing by the end of the 1980s: as Almodóvar was making international news with the success of Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown) in 1988, the government was having its own breakdown after a series of corruption scandals. By 1991 the socialists had been ousted from Madrid’s city council and the right wing Partido Popular (PP) took over. In 1996, it also won the general elections and José María Aznar, a decidedly unglamorous former tax inspector and great pal of Tony Blair’s, became prime minister with a mandate to sort out the country’s finances. Madrid – and all of Spain – has been undergoing some serious belt-tightening ever since. It seems to have worked: unemployment is down, incomes and standard of living are up, and Aznar was re-elected in 2000 with an overall majority. But, to the fury of many Madrileños, most of the budget cuts have been directed at the arts, with contemporary and community-level art being the hardest hit. On top of that, the reactionary PP are also cracking down on what they view as the excesses of Madrid’s legendary nightlife: the botellones – massive weekend gatherings of teenagers with plastic bottles full of a vicious wine and coke concoction – have been abruptly wiped out by recent legislation; and the notorious ’after hours’ clubs – nightclubs which opened their doors at dawn or later – are a dying breed. Almodóvar complained that the city is on its way to becoming ’as boring as Oslo’. But he is no longer a cult figure with his finger on the pulse; success and, most importantly, fame in Hollywood, has removed him from the ranks of the underground hero. And besides, Madrid’s capacity for having a good time goes way back – long, long before the crazy years of the Movida – and it seems unlikely that its spirit will be squashed so easily. Ernest Hemingway observed that ’nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night’ and he would find little to make him change his mind on a Saturday night in Chueca. Few Madrileños will begin the party on Friday night and keep it going until Monday morning as they did at the height of the Movida, but even on half-throttle Madrid is still more vital than most European capitals. Spain has changed at a dazzling pace since the isolation of the Franco years. The pay-off for the privileges of becoming a fully paid-up member of the international community has been the unavoidable dilution of its popular culture. Like everyone else, the Madrileneños lap up generic TV programmes like Gran Hermano (Big Brother) and Operación Triunfo (which made the formerly unknown David Bisbal a massive pop star) and the city centre is slowly emptying as mod cons win out over character and people move into brand new suburban flats. Despite this insidious banalisation some of Madrid’s oldest traditions are being revived. The Madrileños are well known for their gift of the gab and like to boast that they have elevated the art of talking to an art form. The tertulia, an almost untranslatable term for debate or discussion, was perfected 100 years ago when writers and artists gathered daily at celebrated cafés like the Fontana d’Oro, the Universal and the Pombo to expound at length over coffee and brandies. The tertulia rapidly became part of the city’s fabric, an essential thread in the cultural revival which some compared to the Golden Age of Cervantes and Velázquez. Most of the famous literary cafés have long gone, with the exception of the shabby Café Comercial which has hung on in Chueca (now with the internet and fruit machines) and the elegant Café Gijón on the Paseo de los Recoletos. Both still host regular tertulias and the tradition is also being revived in the new, old-style cafés which have risen up in emulation of the old classics. To qualify as a tertulia, a discussion should have no purpose save that of the sheer joy of conversation. On summer evenings there isn’t a free bench to be found in the whole of the city as the locals find a shady spot to enjoy a chat with friends. It might start out with an enquiry into someone’s health, but before long a juicy tertulia is in full swing as Spain’s performance in the World Cup, the latest antics of the mayor José María Alvarez del Manzano, (whose ability to waffle is legendary), or the scandal surrounding a plastic image of the Virgin which has begun shedding tears are fully debated. No one cares if the plastic Virgin is a swizz, or if the Mayor was right all along – the important thing is the conversation. It will take more than TV (la caja tonta, or stupid box) to quash a Madrileño.
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