Terrible as a city with banners

My poor, beloved, Madrid.  The beautiful city is still clear as the moon and fair as the sun...but it's being overrun by flags.

Some years ago, I believe at the first edition of the Celsius 232, a friendly Spaniard commented that she had liked traveling in the US, because she thought it was cute that rural and suburban houses all boasted their own flags, and even flagpoles, and this seemed charming.  "Aquí, si pones una bandera española, cuando no sea la copa mundial, te tildan de facha," she explained.  I remember telling her with some amusement that I rather agreed that flying the flag from a private home (except during the World Cup, of course) was rather "facha" and that I hated how much the US had been drowning in flags since the destruction of the World Trade Center.  (It was a long time ago, and now it's hard to remember how angry and scared I was by the way they sprouted everywhere in what seemed like an atmosphere that couldn't possibly get more toxic.  More innocent times.)

One of the (many) things I love about Madrid is that the only flags you normally see flying from balconies here are the historic tricolor of the Second Republic, with its purple for promise of the future (mostly in Lavapies) and maybe sometimes the rainbow gay pride flag if it's pride week (or if you're in Chueca).  This has always been a city that takes its patriotism lightly.  Which is why I was so upset by the wall of flags in the Barrio Salamanca that I mentioned a couple of days ago.  I ended up taking pictures, because I want evidence that this is not normal.

Calle Almagro 25 - The former Centro de Estudios Historicos that shows up in the archives, and current home of Ediciones Siruela.  With flags.

 There are even a few flags in Carabanchel today, though not the monsters flying from the balconies like these.  More sort of little, jaunty ones, the kind children wave a parades, stuck upright in window boxes (or above the scale in the pescaderia).  I mind these less, because they seem more cheerfully personal, and less aggressive, perhaps because of sheer size. 

When I commented on the flags to the nice people I met in the park today they simply laughed and said that the "chinos" (I quote) were getting rich off selling Spanish flags now and mockingly added that tomorrow (Sunday) was important because "votarem."  I asked (not seriously) if they were Catalans and they replied with the proper degree of offendedness, "No, somos de Carabanchel."  I appreciate people who identify themselves by neighborhood rather than city, but are suspicious of separatist movements. 

I'd like to think that the little flags in Carabanchel are just cheerful "hey, we're all Spanish here" and not evidence of deeply right-wing or anti-Catalan sympathies.  Not that it's difficult to feel some annoyance with the independentistes.  I just saw a serious news program on La Sexta in which the Catalan intellectual du jour interviewed explained that the Catalans' brilliant plan was to wait until Europe intervened after the referendum, and just because everyone at the EU level had said that they wouldn't recognize an independent Catalunya and that this was an internal Spanish matter that didn't mean that they might not intervene and recognize an independent Catalunya if the Catalans made it clear they really really wanted them to.  Because when someone tells you "no" sixteen different ways, they probably mean "maybe."  (Eye roll.)

Still, I don't like the flags.

I hope the Catalans can successfully and peacefully have their referendum tomorrow, and enjoy voting, and then declare victory and go home, so that the flags can go away, and Madrid can once more be simply clear as the moon and fair as the sun, and without unnecessary banners.  As a friend of mine commented when they first appeared in the US at the end of 2001: "I only like collections of flags when there are lots from all different countries gathered together, like at the UN."  If we can get the Catalan nationalism out of the way then the other nasty nationalisms it's calling forth can maybe crawl back under their rocks as well.