"I do not know your name my friend, but I've seen that face before..."

Madrileños remember their past...and try to pay it forward.

One of the famous stories of the Spanish Civil War is how the famous fountain of the goddess Cibeles, on the Paseo del Prado in front of what was then the main post office was covered with sandbags to protect her from bombings.  The people of the city called her "la linda tapada," which means something like "the veiled beauty."  Here's a picture of Cibeles during the Spanish Civil War, covered in sandbags, with a corner of the post office in the background, courtesy of the blog El rincón de Mayrit.

Fuente de Cibeles, 1936-1939, "La linda tapada"

And here's a picture of the Fuente de Cibeles taken this afternoon, with the same post office in the background.

Cibeles and her lions, surrounded by traffic, but no longer covered up.

The sign on what I still think of as the post office (because it actually was a post office when I first visited Spain, although that dates me almost as much as remembering pesetas) and is now a very lovely museum and municipal office space is repeated on the municipal buildings in the Matadero (cultural center) by the river, and on the Ayuntamiento and other public buildings.

A brief article on the TV news last night described a reunion of the niños de la guerra, the children who left Spain as refugees and found refuge in the then Soviet Union.  Some of them never came home, and others came home after nearly two decades (having survived the Second World War and the German invasion of Russia without their parents).  They are quite elderly now, but still have nothing but good words for the Russians who took them in.  And for their sake today's madrileños hang signs to show that (in spite of their national government's attitude), they remember their past, and hold their doors open.