La fiesta de la Almudena is an object lesson in fitting in by being yourself.
As fans of Luis Berlanga's Bienvenidos, Mr. Marshall will know, Spaniards were slightly aggrieved by being left out of the Marshall plan just because they technically were neutral during the Second World War. The gleaming Cuatro Torres north of Chamartin and even the much humbler buildings around me are a testament to Spain's eventual ability to at least somewhat recover without outside help (though average inherited wealth here remains less than in other parts of Europe, because more people were starting with less). Spain also managed to be neutral during World War I. At the time, that was actually clever, since I understand Vitoria/Gasteiz had the benefit of selling arms without worrying about using them, and Spain started the 1920s less devastated than its neighbors to the north. However, this now means that everyone else in Europe gets a holiday on November 11. Even the US gets a holiday on November 11. And Spain has no day off. This is a patent injustice, especially since I'm told by Belgian friends that November 1 is a holiday elsewhere in Europe too, so it's not as if last week's random day off is a fair substitute.
The rest of Spain just has to suffer the injustice. But not Madrid.
I was warned that Thursday this week was another "puente" several days in advance, so I wasn't caught as completely unprepared as I was on November 1, but up until Wednesday I had no idea why it was a holiday. "I think it's Constitution Day or something," one Spaniard said vaguely, when I asked. I happen to know that Constitution Day in Spain is in December, so I was sure it wasn't that. (In fairness about Spaniards being vague on why banks and post offices are closed, the Belgian who told me November 1 was a holiday in Belgium also said it was Ascension Day, which simple logic dictates has to be after Easter, even if you don't connect "El Halloween" to anything. Most people seem to go with the general "day off"/"not day off" division without fussing too much about why.)
I got my first clue on Wednesday in a class at the Complutense that I am auditing, when the professor called on a student with the words "Sí, Almudena -- ¿anda, que mañana es tu santo, no?" The embarrassed student admitted that it was in fact her "santo" on Thursday, and since I know that the Cathedral of Madrid is technically Nuestra Señora de la Almudena I put two and two together, and guessed that Thursday was the fiesta patronal of Madrid, the "Virgen de la Almudena." I received confirmation on Thursday itself, when the very kind friends who had invited me to have lunch "porque es puente" ("because it's a day off") explained that it was indeed the feast of la Almudena, but only a holiday in Madrid, "not even in Alcobendas." They seemed rather proud of this.
So when every other European capital (and the US and Canada) have November 11 as an official holiday, Madrid has somehow managed to wangle November 9 as an official holiday, for a completely distinct and local reason. And people say that things like Halloween and Samhain or Easter and Passover are just adaptations. Ha. Let's face it, days off call to other days off. And for all that people say that Madrid has adopted too many foreign customs, I'd say the city is just fine with staying in step with the rest of Europe by being completely and triumphantly local.
As a side note, all that I know about the Virgen de la Almudena comes from the one time I tried to follow Google maps lousy bike directions into the city center rather than trusting my judgement, and almost passed out on the steep uphill from the Puente de Segovia to the back way behind the cathedral because it was 90 degrees. (For the record, just take the long slow slope up the Calle de Segovia. It's annoying, but the "bike route" is on a ridiculous grade, and is actually only one way, although Google maps gets it wrong.) While pushing my bike up the sidewalk switchbacks and trying to not get nauseous I paused under the Cathedral walls where there was a statue which someone had put fresh flowers under, and a plaque explaining that the cathedral was built here because some time in the fourteenth (¿?) century (or earlier, I forget) a peasant had miraculously found this image of the Virgin (the statue with the flowers) and had learned in a dream that it was a statue from the first century CE. I was seriously close to fainting at the time, but I do recall thinking that it was pretty impressive that a fourteenth century peasant had found a first century statue that looked just like the style of the baroque seventeenth century when someone got the idea of building a cathedral in Madrid. Who knew that first century sculptors at the fringes of the Roman empire were doing work that was 1600 years ahead of their time. (Wikipedia tells me that the cathedral - which wasn't actually built until the end of the 19th C - was built on the site of a church which was built on the site of a mosque, which was destroyed by the city's Christian invaders in 1083. Religious buildings are a bit like random days off. People know where or when they are, they're just not always sure of why.)
Other than that, my one association with Almudena (aside from the student in the class I'm auditing, and a classmate in a seminar I took a few years ago) is the Conchita Piquer song "Almudena" which takes place more or less in the environs of the cathedral, and is therefore a very Madrid song. I went around singing "Almudena, mi Almudena, no te vayas tu de aquí..." all afternoon Thursday after hearing about Madrid's local holiday, because the dratted thing is impossible to get out of your head once it's in. Considerably less tragic than most of the stuff associated with WWI though, in spite of being technically tragic. If you recklessly clicked the link and are now stuck singing the chorus of the song, I make no apologies. Madrid gets under your skin. Even the local holidays.
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