Where is the, uh, the...generalissimo?

I have torn myself away from the hotel room TV, where a morbidly obese woman promises to read my fortune in Spanish for a small fee, to bring you this blog update on Madrid. A city of many domes. A city of many lovely parks. But mainly, a city preoccupied with football. Atletico Madrid played in the Copa Rey final against Seville while we were in town, losing 0-2, and afterwards shirtless lads were everywhere, apparently being ashamed to wear their jerseys. Two days after we headed north the city was to host the UEFA Champions League final, and the volume of advertising for this event was truly breathtaking. MasterCard were the major sponsor, with their tagline being translated from "Priceless" to "no tiene precio": "no it has price" (or, "it has no price" if you're not being a smart arse). At the time of writing the result of this match was unknown, but it is likely that the profits of all involved were ensured.

Madrid has many grand buildings but is apparently not actually that old, so these building are nice and everything but don't really exercise this viewer. They are also very clean, adding to the lack of grit, or character, or some other ethereal quality that I can't quite put my finger on. It is still a lovely place to stroll for a couple of days, and the aforementioned parks are genuinely lovely, decorated with grand royal mausoleums and inexplicable crystal palaces (just the one crystal palace actually). Drinking sherry and nibbling little serves of tasty stuff (blood sausage with cute little fried eggs, chorizo, salmon, jamon, manchego cheese) is another of the tremendously enjoyable activities open to the tourist in Madrid, and we fulfilled our roles in this tradition enthusiastically.

The highlights were the Museo del Prado and an evening spent at a flamenco bar. The Prado took up nearly a whole day and contained more than enough beauty to keep an ignoramus like me entertained for the whole time, despite wobbly legs. It tracked the development of Spanish art and focussed on the three big names of El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya, while perhaps showing a few too many portraits of King Felipe IV, who was obviously terribly vain and looks a right sour bastard. Thanks to Spain's past occupation of Belgium and the Netherlands it also houses a fantastic range of Flemish art. Stolen but beautiful.

The flamenco was in a bar/restaurant called Casa Patas, and though I whinged about the €31 cover charge beforehand I will never mention it again. The show was superb. Three singers and two guitarists performed a brief opening musical number before the two dancers come out to perform together, after which they each did a solo dance in between more singing and strumming. Strumming is a hopelessly inadequate word for what the guitarists were doing, and at times I thought I could hear this style of music's influence over more mainstream rock and pop. The singers sang incredibly high to my ear, but always in control and beautifully. They spasmed and twitched wildly as they sang; I wish I knew what they were singing about but just watching them was emotionally charged enough. The dancers performed alone for about 15 minutes each, and never seemed to be repeating moves and maintained a tremendous energy throughout. Their footwork on the (hopefully strongly reinforced) stage pushed Mel to comment that the quality of the dance could probably be accurately measured with a seismograph. One of the elements I enjoyed most was the intimate interaction between the players; all watched the others for cues but also seemed to enjoy the others' performances and shouted encouragement often, adding to the already engaging energy. The rest of the audience seemed to agree with us and the show ended to wild applause.

We headed north to the province of Castilla y Leon and specifically to the city of Avila, full of 12th to 18th century religious buildings and surrounded by a 30 metre high defensive wall made more charming by the hundreds of swallows constantly flying around it and disappearing into small holes in the sides. Larger birds nested on the tops of the church spires and bell towers, admirably enduring the loud and regular ringing of the bells. The ringing bells provided a pleasant soundtrack while we strolled through the quiet olde world streets.

One night we found ourselves in a tapas bar where we watched the UEFA Champions League final. The walls were lined with photographs of the proprietor with numerous matadors, along with other prints and shots on the bullfighting theme. We had watched some bullfighting on the TV in another bar and had not enjoyed it one bit. On the evening news another night we saw footage of a bull winning, quite horribly injuring the matador by goring him through the face. Bravo bull I say. Back in the Avila bar, the proprietor himself sat at the bar with a younger bloke handling the customer service. Trays of "deliciosos" lined the bar behind glass: prawns, clams, blood sausage, and other things that may or may not have been made of organs. We ate some tiny plates of octopus and tortilla. Some distinguished looking old fellas, some of whom could be recognized from the wall photos, came in to watch the football and yarn conspiratorially with the boys at work. One was served a single mussel on a potato chip as he sat down at the bar. The young guy behind the bar regularly adjusted the contents of the food trays with his bare hands and then blew his nose and wiped some remnants off his chin with the same hands. Internazionale FC (Milan) beat Bayern Munchen in the football, and although we were obviously cheering for Inter the barman asked us as we left if we were German. I grasped the opportunity: "Nein!", I replied. I actually only thought of saying that just now, but it would have been funny huh?