Madrid

                                        Central Madrid

     I haven’t flown since before Covid. Due to trying to avoid it, all of my travels have been limited to how long I was willing to drive. The first drive was in 2021, to Indiana, before the vaccine, to attend my father’s outdoor burial in February. It was brutally cold and my family was masked and practicing social distancing (Remember that coinage? It just took me a minute to remember that remarkable phrase.) It was an inexplicably inhuman experience.  Being at such a seminal human ritual, unable to see one another face to face  

     My next trip was a southern excursion in May of 2022. Just vaccinated, I felt comfortable traveling again.  I drove to cities I had never seen in my years of university studies in the South. Asheville, Charleston, and Savannah.  It was good to be on the road again, though I was no longer enamored by Southern culture. Too much extremism under the bridge.

Beth helping to take down the American flag at Fort Sumpter.  

     The next year I had planned a drive to Montreal, but the smoke from the Canadian wild fires was turning the sky in Cleveland orange, and it didn’t seem like a good plan to go north. 

      Then in 2025, the second Trump administration began, and like all his endeavors, he started turning the country to shit. At first it was so incompetent it was humorous— a bunch of know-nothings cosplaying fascism. But then shit got real with tariffs making daily life impossibly expensive, and the crackdowns on funding for science and universities. Partially in response, my friends Michael and Ellen moved from Cleveland Heights to Madrid. Once academia and comedians started getting fired, my horror and fear about what was happening to my country was creating a mind space that was giving me nightmares and swallowing my appetite. I began fantasizing about visiting Michael and Ellen in Madrid. And then I decided to visit them and later fly to Porto, Portugal to walk the Portuguese El Camino de Santiago. And now here I am in Porto. 

     Because of weather delays I missed my first flight to Spain and had a night in a JFK airport hotel and left for Spain at 4PM the next day. That cut my visit with Michael and Ellen a day short. I arrived at their door in central Madrid at 8 AM Friday morning and they cheerfully (though sleepily) greeted me. I came to their door sans suitcase; due to my plane change adventures, my baggage was enjoying an extra day in New York. 

    Ellen and Michael’s flat is really lovely; two bedrooms and two baths right in the historic center of the city. Their hospitality was joyful and helpful and I felt right at home.

                                   Photo of We Three

     But first, breakfast at a little literary cafe that served breakfast Americano (eggs and bacon and toast). Then a walk through the central city to go to the Primark, an incredibly inexpensive clothing store, so I could buy a spare set of clothing to enable washing the clothing I’d been wearing (and sweating profusely in) for over two days. 

                                   A local landmark 

     After which I was ready to crash from jet lag. I slept through the 1:30-3:30 window for lunch, so at 7:00PM we walked to a nearby place for delicious tapas.  I went to bed at 9:30PM and slept til 12:30 PM Saturday.

     Ellen helping Beth draw water from a public fountain 

     A walk to lunch (which is the main meal in Spain) where I enjoyed a three course meal of savory croquettes, chicken roasted in its own juices, and a chocolate and custard confection. I had been notified my luggage would be delivered that day, but with no specification of time. Michael gamely offered to go home to wait, while Ellen and I went to the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Teins Sofia, Madrid’s contemporary art museum.

     And here this blog post comes full circle. We enjoyed looking at Picassos, Dali’s, a film by Bunuel protesting the wealthy in the time of Spanish fascism, and a film by a Guatemalan artist depicting his time under the government persecutions of the 1970’s. But then there was Guernica.

Guernica, painted by Picasso during the Spanish Civil War

      Like a good student I began observing the screaming mouths, the artificial light sources, the symbolism of the bull and the horse. Suddenly the reality of living under fascism became an emotional reality to me, and all the fear I have been sucking up to keep functioning in the USA boiled up in me and I began to cry. Ellen asked if I’d like to go somewhere less public and we moved, and I sat and sobbed. 

It felt like the first step of my Camino pilgrimage.