Madrid 1978-79:

Forty-four years ago I landed in Madrid to study at La Universidad Complutense during my sophomore year in college. Madrid was the historic, provinical capital of Spain and was just emerging from the bleak Franco years. As a result, there were still Guardia Civil with machine guns prominently stationed around the city. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, the city felt safe at any time of the day or night.

The university arranged for my roommate Teresa and I to be housed with an elderly widow named Maria. She lived in a two-bedroom apartment about 35 minutes by metro and another 15 minutes of walking from the campus. I remember the gut-wrenching first hour in Maria’s sitting room attempting to make polite conversation with the woman we were going to live with for a year. Having studied four years of Spanish in high school and a year in college, I felt super-confident of my language ability… until Maria started to speak. Then I realized that I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. After asking her to slow down a little we managed to communicate a little.

Since she was going to be making our meals, I had to tell her that I was a vegetarian. If I had three heads, I would not have appeared more strange to her. She did not know any other vegetarians. “But, you eat chicken?” I shook my head. “You must eat turkey?” Again, no. “How about pork? Lamb? Beef?”  “No, no and no.” I volunteered that I would eat some seafood, hoping that might make it easier for her, although I had not eaten any in four years.

Not really believing me, she continued to ask me the same meat questions in the days to come. Fed up, she solved the problem by making tortilla espanola (a fat egg and potatoe omlette), a Spanish classic, three times per week. What we didn’t finish at dinner, she cut up and stuck in a baguette to make an egg and potato bocadillo (sandwich) for my lunch the next day. It was a carbo-loading year, for sure. Maria’s other go-to was boiled potatoes, canned tuna and tomato slices with a dollop of mayo. To wash it all down, she poured us a half glass of red wine mixed with 7-Up, a drink commonly served to children. Maria wasn’t a creative cook but I never went hungry and appreciated her effort to accomodate my diet.

Breakfast was always a giant cup of coffee with hot milk and a package of Maria Dorada cookies that reminded us of graham crackers. Since there were at least six great bakeries on our way to school, Teresa and I stopped at one (or more!) of those for a yummy pastry as well. Thankfully we walked a lot every day so the extra carbs didn’t bother us too much.

Determined to make the most of my time in Spain, I scheduled all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving Friday to Monday for travel and adventure days. Mostly, I hitchhiked with a friend and met amazing people who went out of their way to feed us and to show us the best of their villages. If I didn’t have a friend to travel with, I took the train or bus, anything to keep exploring.

If I wasn’t adventuring, I looked for the few English-speaking tourists that wound up visiting the Rastro, the giant flea market that was held in the Retiro Park on Sundays. When they discovered I was going to school in Madrid, they were usually excited to hire me as a private tour guide. I shared what I was learing about Spanish art, history, and architecture, and took them to my favorite local restaurants and bars, which they probably would not have tried on their own.

The tourists would comment, “Your tours are so lively and fun!” This was in part because of my passion for everything Spanish and also because of my habit of enhancing the life stories of long-dead historical figures just a little bit, to keep them interesting. The generous tips I earned allowed me keep traveling! (In those pre-Google days, I could get away with a little embellishment to make history more exciting.)

At the end of the school year, I had to return home to Indiana when my student visa expired. When I hugged my Spanish “Mama” Maria, good-bye, I promised I would return soon and often.

Although my Indiana University friends and I received lots of culture training prior to our arrival in Spain, no one mentioned how difficult it would be to return home. Being away from family and friends for a year with very limited communication options changed our old relationships. The letters and postcards I sent and recieved were often on a three to four week delay. News from home was old by the time we heard anything.

Somehow we discovered that a few of the pay phones in the city were purposefully broken by some guys in a drug ring and it would allow us to make a five-minute international call for just 5 duros (about a nickel.) Heart-racing from nervous adrenalin, I took a risk and called my mom a few times from one of those black market pay phones while another friend stood guard to make sure we were not discovered by the Guardia. Of course, we did not have laptops, cell phones, email, texting, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Zoom or any other way to communicate besides the paper thin blue airmail letters or postcards with space for three lines.

When I returned home, I felt like a piece of pie that had been removed from the whole and that the pie had closed up again with no room for me to squeeze back in place. Life at home had gone on without me. Frustrated and depressed, I soon dropped out of university and accepted a nanny job in Oklahoma. Nothing could compare to the year I spent in Spain so I was determined to seek out a new life. After a year of trying to figure out what to do with my life, I finally re-enrolled at Indiana University and got back on track to graduate.

Madrid 2022:

Life goes on. In spite of vowing to return soon and often, somehow it took me 43 years to get back to Madrid. This weekend Rocky and I took the five-hour train ride from Gijon to Madrid to spend a long weekend. I discovered that Madrid and I have changed a lot.

The Madrid we discovered this time is a very European, international city that has maintained its beautiful historic buildings but now also boasts futuristic high-rise buildings and modern art structures. No matter where we were, we heard English spoken. The now sprawling city is bustling with energy and full of tourists from all over Europe.

There are 35,000 restaurants and bars and they specialize in foods from all over the world. We walked past multiple vegetarian, gluten-free and vegan restaurants as well as a place that advertised “American Breakfast All Day!” that had a long line of college students waiting outside to get pancakes, bacon and Fruit Loops! No doubt I would have been in that line occassionally if that restaurant was around when I was in school.

Rocky and I went armed with a long list of must-see places to visit, but I also had another agenda. I wanted to re-visit the city I loved and left so long ago and see if anything felt familiar after all of these years. In the taxi, on the way in from the train station, I stared out the window, not recognizing anything. Where was I? When I shared my thoughts with the taxi driver, he said he had lived there for 50 years and would point out things I might remember.

When he showed me the old post office, I had a small glimpse of my past. How many times had I gone to that huge beautitful buidling to mail letters or packages to the U.S.? Sometime in the past 4 decades, the building was re-purposed as the mayor’s office and now has a viewing platform and restaurant at the top so visitors can enjoy a spectacular 360 degree view of the city.

After checking-in to our hotel, we headed to a restaurant in the Chueca barrio, a popular gay neighborhood, for lunch. Colorful rainbow flags hung from many balconies and purple flowering trees lined the narrow streets. None of this felt familiar but it was a welcome change. Homosexuality was highly illegal under the dictatorship of Franco. In June of 1979, the year I left, Spain decriminalized homosexuality as part of the post-Franco reforms and held its first Orgullo Gay de Madrid, the Madrid Gay Parade. Today, the Spanish people are considered one of Europe’s most socially tolerant people.

After lunch we walked to the Retiro park, my old private-tour recruitment grounds. It was a sunny, beautiful day and the park was a gorgeous place to stroll but none of it felt familiar. The following day we enjoyed a food, wine and history tour with a guide named Nacho who works for Gourmet Madrid. Nacho is considered a Gato(Cat), a distinction held by native Madrid residents who can claim at least four consecutive generations of family from Madrid. He was knowledgeable, passionate and entertaining. No doubt, all of his historical facts were accurate as well.

On Nacho’s recommendation we went to a flamenco show that night at Villa Rosa, which Nacho claimed was one of the oldest and most authentic flamenco venues in Madrid. The show did not disappoint!

The next morning we headed to Chocolateria San Gines for churros and chocolate, the decadent fried donut sticks that you dip into Spanish hot chocolate that is as thick and delicious as pudding. Fueled by sugar we continued checking off our must-see list. Unfortunately, we could only stroll through the Mercado de San Miguel which is famous for all of its delicious tapas(appetizers) because we were too full of churros to sample another bite.

Needing a long walk to work off our breakfast, we plugged in the address of the apartment where I used to live with Maria. I really wanted to see something familiar. Google maps steered us through some rather run-down neighborhoods, parts of Madrid that are not on any visitor’s must-see list. As we walked, the weather turned cold and nasty but we kept going, turning our umbrellas right side in several times when the wind turned them inside out.

Finally, we arrived in front of what was supposed to be my old apartment. Calle Caceres, the street name was correct. The building number was correct. Yet, it did not look familiar at all. This apartment building had terraces, where I remembered Juliet balconies. Could it have changed that much? I suppose so.

Slightly deflated, I looked towards the corner where there used to be a bar. Maria used to send Teresa and I to the bar each week to get her wine jug filled with the house wine, something all of the neighbors also did. Although the building was painted orange now instead of brown, it looked like the bar might still be there. I peeked in the window but, of course, nothing was the same.

When I rounded the corner, I noticed the old bar was now a restaurant called El Fuego (The Fire.) Flames were painted around the top border of the building. The restaurant was shuttered, ilegible graffitti covering the front entrance. Then I noticed someone had written in large white letters: La Vida Sigue, meaning Life Goes On. I started to laugh. If ever there was a personal message meant for me, that was it. Life Goes On. Quit looking back. Everything changes. Your past is in flames. Move along now…nothing to see here.

We headed back to the center of Madrid. No more comparisons. No more looking for something familiar. I was finally ready to accept that Madrid and I were unrecognizeable from who we were so long ago.

When we got back to Plaza Mayor, we were finally hungry again. El Botin, considered the oldest restaurant in the world at almost 300 years old was on our list to try. I remembered going there for drinks with my university friends back when we could hang out in the cave rooms underneath the restaurant. Before going in, I told myself there was very little chance we could actually sit in the cave room anymore.  I didn’t want to get my hopes up again.

When I asked the host if we could sit downstairs to eat lunch, he looked somewhat surprised that I knew about it. He said, “Yes, follow me.” He showed us to an old, rickety staircase hidden behind the bar. We had to duck our heads and hold on to a railing, which looked only slightly more modern, to climb down the stairs. These stairs were definitely not built to any modern-day code!

Miraculously, at the bottom of the stairs I found a glimpse of my past. The cave rooms were unchanged from the last time I was there 43 years ago except that instead of a bodega (wine cellar) where we used to have drinks, it was now a fine-dining restaurant. We were both more grown up now…not fancy but a little more sophisticated. Instead of just a glass of wine, we could now have a gourmet meal.

I couldn’t stop grinning as Rocky and I split a delicious salad with artichoke hearts, asparagus, peppers, tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, olives and tuna and toasted with a bottle of Ribero de Duero. Rocky had lamb and potatoes and I had clams for the entree. Amusingly, no place in Madrid felt more like home to me than this 300-year-old cave room. After all, I used to be a typical 18 year old student who liked to hang out with her friends and share a few stories.

At least the part about sharing stories with friends has not changed. Life goes on… and in many ways gets better and better.

 

From the author:

I first wrote about my university days in Spain back in February 2021. No surprise that my first year in Spain inspired our eventual move to Spain. https://upanddowndog.com/the-long-way-home/

I still love art, history, architecture and food tours. However, these days, I leave the guiding to the professionals when we go on retreat. If you want to join us for one of our next adventures, consider stepping back in time with us on the Puglia, Italy Walking & Yoga Retreat. https://globalyogatrips.com/puglia-italy-walking-yoga-retreat/

Going to Madrid? You may want to check out some of these places:

Chocolateria San Gines:https://chocolateriasangines.com/

Villa Rosa, Flamenco: https://www.esmadrid.com/noche/villa-rosa-tablao-flamenco

El Botin, oldest restaurant in the world: https://botin.es/en/home/

Mercado de San Miguel: https://mercadodesanmiguel.es/

Gourmet Madrid Tours:https://www.gourmetmadrid.com/