San Isidro: Chotis and Chulapos (Part 2 of 3)

 

¡Viva Madrid! ¡Viva San Isidro!

 

Or how an international city does a local party

 

There's a whole wonderful set of silly traditions around San Isidro.  And the best thing is that they're all unashamedly modern and cheerfully not purely "Spanish."  Just purely Madrid. 

San Isidro was canonized sometime in the seventeenth century when Spain's new capital city needed a local saint.  By the late eighteenth century, the sleepy backwater town had doubled and quadrupled in size into a capital city of a flailing empire with huge inequality and plenty of political problems, already about to be eclipsed, but still with a far-flung influence that stretched from Mexico to Manila to Milan...and of course back to Madrid.  By this time San Isidro was well ensconced in his hermitage, and the tradition of the verbena was a standard rite of Spring.  Goya captured the scene in 1788:

Goya's version of the Pradera de San Isidro.  All the buildings in the background are still there, and you can still see some of them.  But there are a lot more buildings blocking the river nowadays.  And a lot less river.

For comparison, here's a picture of the same place I two weeks ago.  Not as different as you'd think:

Note royal palace (Palacio de Oriente) in the distance on the left, and people sitting on grass, as in Goya's painting.

In Goya's early period, when he did his tapestry paintings, he enjoyed painting the people of Madrid in what was at the time the standard costume for the peasants of the surrounding countryside and also the city-dwellers.  These were the people known as majos, hence Goya's maja paintings, the maja vestida and maja desnuda, and various upper class women posing in "maja" costumes.  (For some reason the word majo has changed from noun to adjective in modern Castilian, and now means roughly the equivalent of sweet or simpático.  "Es una persona muy maja," in its original early 19th century form would have meant something like "he's a very lower class person" and currently simply means "he's a really nice guy."  Maybe the closest English equivalent would be "salt of the earth" or "down to earth?"  Thank you, King James Bible.)  So while the afrancesados (the urban middle classes like Goya himself and the aristocracy) followed French (i.e. standard European) fashions, local people dressed in somewhat more practical (lighter and with shorter skirts for women) and much more colorful clothing, which is nowadays fondly known as "traje Goyesco" (Goya clothes).

So naturally, since Goya's work is pretty much the best visual record of what "goyesco" clothing looked like, the Asociaciones Castizos de Madrid, who dress up in traditional costumes and do traditional dances for San Isidro and the other verbenas use his paintings quite a bit.  The Asociación Calderón de la Barca, which did some lovely performances, also flatly tries to recreate some of his paintings, but in movement.  Here's Goya's famous painting The Parasol, from 1787:

And here's a picture from the Asociación's performance in the Plaza de Vistillas (part of "la verbena de la Vistilla") from Sunday, May 13:

I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of their recreation of Goya's Blind Man's Buff in motion, but overall, it was a beautiful performance, and tremendously fun to watch paintings spring to life.  (The emcee of the verbena explained that the Asociación goes into the pueblos around Madrid and roots around in archives to try to find the most accurate possible music and dance steps from the time period to match their costumes.)

I was pretty far back from the stage in the Plaza de Vistillas, and had a dying camera battery, so I couldn't zoom and do videos well, but here's a not great one of a series of goyesco costumes dancing in ways that Goya might have found familiar:

These are the folk dances of Castilla-La Mancha, the most famous of which is the jota, followed by the seguidilla, and a few others.  What's fascinating watching them, and listening to the tinkly guitar-like accompaniment and singing, is that you can see the roots of a lot of later dance forms.  The enthusiastic yodeling chirps of the singers travel West and South and root in mariachi music, along with the guitars (and the cuatro of Caribbean folk music).  The castanets turn into clapping, and the arm postures and the ending embrace of the couples travel still further south and become Argentine chacarera.  But if you look at the pointed feet and pas de chat, and the men's stockinged calves and the women's full, tutu-like skirts, you realize that some of the jota went East and North also, and became classical ballet.  In motion, the folk dances of Spain become those of the Americas, but the still visual successor to the "trajes goyescos" is probably actually Degas.

While I couldn't do good videos of much of the formal performance, very fortunately the dancers also paraded along with the cabezudos to get to the Plaza de Vistillas, and as there weren't that many people at the parade, I was able to get up close and take a good video.  I include it here because it makes me happy.  The music (obviously not guitars) is from a wind instrument called a dulzaina.

 I leave it to the viewer to decide whether they agree with Richard Ford's sniffy judgment in the 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain that "Just as Spaniards are musical without being accomplished, their dances are saltatory without being graceful."  (My personal response to Ford is: screw you and your Italian opera and French ballet.  Spanish music and dance are awesome.  But I'm biased.  I will say that unlike their neighbors to the north, Spaniards have never felt the need to pass laws to ensure a minimum of Spanish-language songs on their radio stations because there's a ton of Spanish music and it's played everywhere anyway.  So there.)  It must be said that many Spaniards I've met are gracefully modest about their own folk dances, and think that among the European peoples, the Irish are the most truly musical and accomplished dancers.

procesión de gigantes y cabezudos

If the goyescos and the jotas are eighteenth century, probably the truly oldest tradition is the slightly bizarre one of the cabezudos, which I am severely tempted to translate as "fatheads" since there is in fact a fine tradition of satirizing well known characters.  Also known as gigantes, these rather odd figures are sort of the flip side of the solemn Semana Santa floats.  I understand that in Burgos and places where the tradition is really developed there are parades with dozens of characters, including El Cid, and Sancho Panza (for some reason Don Quixote was not mentioned), as well as monarchs, dignitaries and of course local "chulapos."  (The chulapo is the nineteenth century successor to the eighteenth century majo.  We'll get to them in a moment.)  There's something rather endearing about the idea of a gigantic three dimensional political caricature which dances.  The Madrid cabezudos procession was quite modest, with only an anonymous king, a queen who my Madrileña friend unhesitatingly identified as Isabel la Católica, and a pair of chulapos.  The "dancers" switched off, setting down their whole body puppets on wooden frames and ducking out from under them to be replaced regularly, which is no wonder, since spinning around while carrying that weight is no small feat.

I should take a moment here to say that it's mildly cool that the political gigantes in Madrid are Isabel I and "the king" who is nameless, because it reminds me rather of a stand up comedian I saw on TV here a while ago who commented sarcastically that he couldn't understand why women objected to being known as the wife of so-and-so because after all it happened to men all the time, like with "¿ay, cómo se llama?  Se me escapa.  Sabes, ese chico tan majo.  Es que no me sale su nombre.  Bueno, ya sabes, el marido de Letizia Ortiz."  ("What's his name, I can't remember. You know, that kid who's such a nice guy.  I just can't remember his name.  Letizia Ortiz's husband."  FYI, for those who are not up on Spanish politics, the joke is that Letizia Ortiz is the current queen of Spain.  Her husband, Felipe VI, traces his lineage directly to the rulers of Spain in the time of Goya.)

For a San Isidro free of "violencias machistas."

The giant screen behind the stage in the Plaza de Vistillas (visible in the earlier videos) was set up for the series of rock concerts planned there for the evening, after the folk dances of the goyescos and the chulapos.  But before the performances started the screen broadcast a public service announcement which went perfectly with the theme of "Queen and husband of" saying that just because everyone was out drinking and dancing and celebrating that was no excuse for sexual harassment, and "wouldn't it be cool?" (¿molaría, no?) if every single person at the festival stood up and defended any person they saw who was getting harassed, ending with the slogan "por unas fiestas libres de violencias machistas."  The theme was repeated at a "punto violeta" in the Pradera de San Isidro on the fifteenth, where people could go to report harassment.  (See photo.)  My Madrid friend added in an undertone that it was a very good thing to mention that at the start of the festival because these kinds of harassment were very widespread and were una verguenza.  The obvious reference point here is the recent much publicized rape trial of a group of guys who assaulted a young woman at the San Fermines festival in Pamplona (Hemingway would have been too embarrassed to write about it).  They were found guilty of assault but not rape, which led to widespread protests and demonstrations about a corrupt and machista justice system, by people who presumably wanted to see them publicly castrated.  (Mind you, if I were the victim or the victim's friend I'd be totally ok with that as a punishment.  But I'm a bit uncomfortable with protests demanding a harsher sentence for what was already essentially a guilty verdict.)  In any case, while it's very nice that Madrid is anxious to have a safe and friendly environment for everyone at it's fiestas (especially including those which have had the reputation at least since Goya if not since the Siglo de Oro of being a place to take a siesta under the trees by the river and discreetly hook up), I was also somewhat amused to have the crowd listen gravely and agree with solemn nods and mutters of approval to the "don't sexually harass people" message, and then (repeatedly on Sunday and Tuesday) cheerfully join in the chorus of the classic crowd-pleasing favorite "Monísima," a song which is essentially one prolonged cat-call.  ("Mono" for some reason means "cute" as well as "monkey."  "Monísima" means roughly "super-cute.")   The song's warbled refrain is "'monísima, monísima, monísima,' así te dicen cuando pases por allí..."Monísima, monísima, monísima," te dicen todos al pasar, olé que sí  Y te repiten con salero "monísima" por esas calles de Madrid."  The Spanish are very serious (not to say obsessive) about stamping out "violencias machistas."  But they'd be horrified at the idea of not kissing strangers on meeting.  (Because according to very serious studies which they very gravely publicize not giving and receiving regular hugs has a very negative effect on people's mental health.)

Leaving aside its somewhat dubious lyrics, the song Monísima is a much-beloved chotis, a late nineteenth century dance, traditionally done by chulapos.  As mentioned above, while there is fondness and respect for the Goyesco majos of the eighteenth century, the true San Isidro look is the "chulapo," a costume of working class madrileños which dates to the second half of the nineteenth century.  As with majo, the word chulo can mean "cute" though it originally meant "tough."  (The closest would be maybe the admiring use of "gangsta" in the present.  It's sort of sad that words originally meaning "tough" came to mean cute, and it offers evidence all the firmer for being unconscious that Jorge Semprun was right when he said that thinking the raised fist salute was angry and threatening was unrealistic since it was above all the salute of the powerless, "humiliated, offended, and too often defeated.")

Chulapos y chulapas on parade

The tradition of San Isidro (mostly but not exclusively observed by those under twelve and over seventy, who are not self-conscious) is to go dressed "de chulapo."  For men, traditionally, this means black trousers, a white shirt, a vest printed with small black and white checks, a cap (pulpusa) printed with the same checks, and a red carnation in the buttonhole of said vest.  If you want to go over the top you can have a checked jacket too.  Not too surprisingly, a lot of women nowadays have adopted the checked cap and white blouse as a kind of modified form, because it's relatively simple, and having a cap to keep the sun out of your eyes is useful.  Basically, it would be mildly formal wear in black and white checks.  Guys are lucky.  For women, the costume is a bit more elaborate, though the silhouette still actually looks strikingly modern if you compare it to other nineteenth century costumes: a long dress, or skirt, tight and figure-hugging to the mid-thigh, and then spreading out into a very full frilly skirt which comes to the ankles (basically the Ginger Rogers silhouette), with puffed sleeves, usually in a print with white polka dots.  A white scarf covering the hair, with a carnation pinned under it, and (the most important and flamboyant accessory) the "mantón de manila," the gigantic fringed shawl with elaborate flower embroideries which is looped over the elbows.  Naturally, a lot of women who don't want to commit to the full dress just wear a carnation and a mantón, as a way of showing willing, like people on Halloween wearing witch hats but not full costumes.

Older chulapos look on approvingly, as young chulapo and semi-chulapa learn the chotis dance

For small children, there are modified "vestidos de chulapa" which are essentially like Halloween costumes, and over the course of a long day at the fairgrounds it is possible to see little girls in long dresses that are quite grubby after a day spent rolling down hills and generally enjoying themselves.

A delay in the sound system's arrival prevents the chotis from beginning, and the next generation of chulapos and chulapas to be take the floor to work off some energy.

Sensible parents make sure that their little ones wear sneakers under their dresses, so they can run around.  The traditional footwear for adults is either the relatively low Cuban heel for formal dances, or flat alpargatas for a day in the pradera.

In general, part of what makes the costume of the chulapa look strikingly modern in contrast to the full hoop skirts of the 1860s or the bustles of the 1870s and 1880s in the rest of Europe or the US, is the lack of petticoats, and general fussiness.  But that goes somewhat with the lack of high heels or soft slippers: this was the dress of working women, and one had to be able to wear it all day and do at least some physical activity without passing out (in what was, let's face it, a pretty hot climate).  I suspect that precisely because the dress looks reasonable and unfussy to modern eyes it looked extremely revealing and sexy to the late nineteenth century upper class, which would explain its repeated appearance in the zarzuelas that immortalized the chulapos.  The zarzuelas were supposedly based in popular culture, and a lot of the performances on San Isidro are in fact just dancing to recordings of hit numbers, so it's a bit like looking at a medley of Broadway show tunes.  In fact, it's a lot like looking at Broadway show tunes because (like Calderón's work earlier, and like the Broadway shows that came just a few decades after the zarzuelas), these are songs that are filled with a bunch of incredibly local references (streets, plazas, restaurants, theaters, etc.).  The Madrid songs in the zarzuelas are as specific as a song like "42nd Street."  When "Su Majestad el Chotis" says that the dance is danced the same way "en Vistillas que en Chamberí" that's as clear as "from the Bronx to the Battery."  But while the dresses of the chulapas are indeed pretty (at least I think so), we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they were originally meant to be relatively practical.  (I will say that the rise of stretchy fabrics has probably made them more comfortable, since my Madrid friend says her historic costume is uncomfortable because you can't take long strides in it, and I noticed one person wearing a full chulapa dress who was obviously pregnant.  I assume in their original form there must have been maternity dresses as well, but I suspect spandex in the present.)

The one concession to pure adornment in the original costume was really the magnificent mantón.  And like the fashionable checks of vests and caps of the men (which were originally known as tela inglés, English cloth), the mantón was fashionable because it was conspicuously foreign.  The zarzuela La verbena de la Paloma has a famous duet, "¿Dónde vas con mantón de Manila?"  ("Where are you going with your Manila shawl?" which in the context of the show is more or less "where are you going all dressed up to the nines?") but it hadn't really occurred to me that in the 19th century this literally meant a shawl from Manila until my Madrileña friend commented (apropos of the beautiful shawls around us in the pradera) that the grandmother of one of her classmates in school (in the 1960s) had been the daughter of the last Spanish governor of the Philippines.  The grandmother (the governor's daughter) had been in her thirties in 1898, when she came to Spain for the first time (and proceeded to marry, have kids, and become a grandmother in due time).  My friend said that her school friend had been the envy of her class because her grandmother had an incredible collection of "mantones de Manila" which were in fact...from Manila.  The Philippines was close enough to China to use Chinese silk to manufacture shawls, and the embroidered flowers (aside from being done at slave labor prices, which then as now is what makes luxury goods from that part of the world cheap) do actually have a somewhat Asian style, once you realize what you're looking at.

So in spite of being the proudly "traditional" and "local" dress of madrileños, neither the magnficient mantones made of Chinese silk in the Philippines, nor the smart checked vests of "English" cloth (imported from India) were actually really Spanish (or even European) in production.  (Ironically nowadays the Spanish press runs periodic articles about luxury tailor shops in Spain resisting the trend of cheap mass-produced Chinese shawls and doing "authentic" mantones in Spain.  One hundred years and fifty years from now people will probably try to figure out whether baggy jeans and hoodies are a "United States" style or whether they are from Southeast Asia where all but the most expensive clothing labels suggest they originate.)  This is completely appropriate when you consider that one dresses up de chulapo in order to dance the traditional dance of nineteenth century Madrid, the chotis...which is a corruption of the word schottische, which according to Wikipedia is a dance "originating in Bohemia" and for some reason named after Scotland (because people in Vienna this was how Scots danced????  There are some rabbit holes you don't even want to go down.).  Under the circumstances, it's kind of funny that when my friend asked me kindly what kinds of folk dances were typical in "allá en tu tierra" I blanked completely for a moment and couldn't think of any American dances, and said that it depended on the region and that immigrant groups from different parts of the world had all brought theirs from elsewhere.  I was thinking of course of salsa (which I explained has a "New York style" which is recognized as local), but then it occurred to me that Charleston was genuinely American, and that led me to Lindy Hop and Swing (which my friend had at least heard of), and finally it occurred to me to mention square dancing, and of course in different times and places in the US different people have waltzed to mariachis, and done Irish clog dancing which has worked its way into tap, and transformed tarantellas and mambos and at quite a bit else.  Not counting rock and roll, and hip-hop styles, and break dancing, and so on.  But no, faced with the chotis and the paso doble my first response to "American" folk dances was "I can't think of any."  Some Fulbright representative of American culture I am.

In any case, essentially, the way Madrileños celebrate their local saint and their proud origins is by dressing up in imported clothing adapted to Spanish styles, and doing a version of a Central European version of an allegedly Scottish dance.  To which I say (as the dancers periodically did at the end of each set), ¡Viva San Isidro! y ¡Viva Madrid!  This is the ultimate reaction to the poisonous limpieza de sangre provincialism which claims that "authenticity" is found in faux-medieval traditions of purity and so on.  Madrid in the nineteenth century is supposed to be at its most provincial, but the fact is even then it had a cosmopolitan touch.  As one of the songs (aptly titled "Viva Madrid") says "si no eres de aquí, debieras ser."  ("If you're not from here, you should be.")  The associations that dress up in traditional costumes and perform the chotis, along with the paso doble, and other dances of the late nineteenth century (including the cheerfully appropriated habanera, which comes from kind of the opposite direction as the mantones de manila) call themselves "castizos" (from the word "casta" which can mean either "caste" or "chaste") which is literally the opposite of "mestizo" or "mixed" and supposedly means "pure."  Having some experience with such groups in other parts of the world (the stropdragers in Ghent, or the Society of Martha Washington in Texas), I asked my Madrid friend if membership in these "castizo" associations required a Madrid pedigree.  (I should say that my friend was born in Madrid but that her parents were from elsewhere...which makes her a true madrileña according to most people here, since "everyone is from somewhere else.")  "Oh, no," she replied, immediately.  "You could join, if you wanted to.  They need young people."  So "castizo" in Madrid means (and has meant for a while), anyone who lives here and loves the city.  My kind of town.

Experienced chotis dancers strut their stuff. Note gentleman on one foot.

It should also be said that the evolution of Madrid "traditional" dances is relentlessly toward the couple dance.  The "saltatory" jota is already danced with a partner, but is mostly a line dance.  The chotis is a slow, dignified chance for a couple to focus completely on each other.  (This is a culture that approves of hugging, and thinks the Dominican version of bachata is kind of cold, as opposed to the nice Cádiz-born "bachata sensual.")  The trick of the chotis is that the man is not supposed to move his feet at all.  He is simply the axis that the woman does a grapevine around.  Men who are accomplished can achieve a certain music-box ballerina glide, and to truly show off will do so on one foot.  When chulapos prefer a lively dance, they do the paso doble, or possibly a waltz.

Although the verbena de Vistilla on Sunday did include formal performances of chulapos dancing chotis and paso dobles, and performing dances from zarzuelas, the real key here is audience participation.  So on the Día de San Isidro the association Villa de Vallecas gave their performance.  Then (after waiting for a while to get their sound system to arrive, since the organization of the fiesta hadn't set it up in advance, and the police were - quite sensibly, given the sad world we live in - refusing to allow unknown rented vans to drive through the literally tens of thousands of pedestrians going through the fairgrounds on the Paseo Quince de Mayo up to the Parque San Isidro, and it took a while to get someone to vouch for the sound system driver) they had a "come dance chotis with us" event on an open dance floor in the park.    It started as a somewhat sedate performance by the members of the asociación.

The video above is a nice example of classic chotis dancing.  The song, "El señorito," starts with a John Travolta and disco reference, and is clearly post-Franco.  The other classic chotis, like "Monísima" are early twentieth century.  Franco-era chotis had to tone down some of the lyrics about sex and drug use.  This might explain the unbridled enthusiasm with which the mostly older members of the asociación sang along to lyrics forbidden in their youth.  ("La Lola, dicen que no duerme sola...")  However, the older members of the asociación were determined to get young people dancing, and succeeded after the gentleman with the microphone insisted "we want everyone to dance, so don't be shy, los chicos con las chicas, las chicas con chicas, o chicos con chicos."  This kindly admonition ended up with really very sweet results.  At first only a few older couples were brave enough to join in.

On Sunday in the Plaza de Vistillas, a little chulapo grabs a likely partner and tries to dance.

But then gradually the dance floor filled up, animated by the gentleman who in the video below can be heard saying "muy bien!" and then adding that "there will be notes at the end for beginners."  I love the mix of ages and costumes in the video below:

My friend, who knows that I dance, kept encouraging me to go on the dance floor, which I would have happily done had anyone invited me.  Although she kept insisting that she never danced (though she feels regretfully that she's letting down the traditions of San Isidro) when they announced the final dance she said, "oh, you have to dance" so the two of us did a paso doble together, neither one of us quite leading since neither of us are sure of the stepts, not on the dance floor but just on the dirt of the park around it.  And we weren't the only shy people dancing around the dance floor as well as on it.


The general sweet inclusiveness of the chotis seems like a very apt metaphor for what I love about Madrid.  But of course, since the Barrio San Isidro is an immigrant neighborhood, they're also open to having new dances in the Parque San Isidro, from the people who live around the park year round, instead of just those who come for the verbena.  The "neighborhood association" of the Calle Tercio Terol works toward "social inclusion" and tries to provide services to immigrant families.  They also had performances in San Isidro, of dances from throughout Latin America.  My Madrid friend and I caught the Cochebamba Salay group on Tuesday morning, performed by a local group, while what looked like Mexican and other folk dancers practiced on the grass.

Cochebamba Salay

 I gather Cochebamba is a city in Bolivia, so I'm assuming the dancers were Bolivians.  They drew a respectful crowd, and succeeded in enchanting a number of children (some dressed as chulapos) including one toddler, who was repeatedly picked up and pulled back from the perimeter of the fascinating dancers by his father.  Finally another man (Latin American by face, I would have said) turned to the Spanish father and said cheerfully, "déjale, tío, que no molesta a nadie."  ("Let him go, man, he won't bother anyone.")

Spaniards in my neighborhood tend to be somewhat sniffy about los hispanos (while being ferociously protective and offended by all the things the Drumpf and his ilk say about Mexicans, because only they are allowed to insult their former colonists).  There is also the awkward thing that Latin American immigrants tend to be considerably more devout than Spaniards, and thus are generally the ones in line for holy water and attending the open air Mass, which means that they mingle with generally the oldest and most conservative segment of the Spanish population.  So it was a stroke of genius for the local neighborhood association (who are clearly good people) to make sure that they did music and dance for San Isidro, to prove that they are in the park for the same reason as everybody else, and not because of any suspicious religious tendencies.  My Madrid friend, who is basically very fair-minded, noted that it was "una pena" that the Bolivians did not have a proper dance floor to do what she correctly called un taconeo - a set of heel stamps - and had to dance on dusty dirt which got on their pretty costumes, unlike the chulapos with their more elaborate stage and sound system.

But then, she was also sympathetic to the little demonstration we saw entering the top of the Parque San Isidro from the Vía Carpetana, of a local youth football club, who had somewhat desperately taken the only time when Madrileños from the far side of the river (e.g. the city center side, which is the richer and more powerful) bother to come to my neighborhood to try to get some attention, and were marching along in their football uniforms among the chulapos with signs and chants proclaiming "Queremos igualdad!  Cesped ya!"  ("We want equality!  Grass now!")  Apparently, being an obscure football club in a "barrio olvidado" (to quote my friend's words) they are playing on dirt.  I couldn't figure out whether they were demanding astroturf or actual grass, but either way, good luck to them.

"Queremos igualdad!  Cesped ya!"

My friend predicted (correctly) that the police would not allow the kids and their parents and coaches to pass into the main part of the fair, where all the food stalls were, and also the open air mass (which we just missed).  In fairness, it would have been difficult to fit so many people going in the opposite direction of really very heavy foot traffic.  But still, in spite of its idealization of its chulapos and majos from preceding centuries, Madrid still hasn't quite caught up with the needs of the current citizens of poorer neighborhoods, although they have now introduced participatory budgeting (there's a sign at the polideportivo asking people to vote for renovations of a local polideportivo, and I got a WhatsApp a few days ago as a mass forward asking people to vote for a local animal shelter), and they do seem to be trying to take some steps toward providing more resources to less fashionable neighborhoods.  (Bike shares on this side of the river would be nice.)

In any case, San Isidro, Madrid's amiable saint of the "periferia" as people here call neighborhoods which are both geographically and economically and socially "on the periphery" of the city, seems to have provided a good chance for people to mingle, and to be proud of not being aristocratic.  And also to spend a lot of time singing and dancing in the many styles that befit an imperial capital, that has always looked outward.  Tomorrow's entry (the final San Isidro one, I promise) will be about the other major activities during the Día de San Isidro, namely eating and drinking at the food stands, eating and drinking while sitting on the grass a la Goya paintings, and eating and drinking in between going on fairground rides that make you sick to your stomach.  But definitely with lots of eating and drinking.  (Which naturally you do before siesta on the grass, and then dancing until midnight when there are fireworks.)  For now, I will sign off with the song "Viva, Madrid!" which Youtube research tells me is by one Francisco López, and is from a "fantasy musical" from 1956, called "El águila de fuego" (The Eagle of Fire), which is quite naturally a reference to the Mexican Quetzalcoatl.  Hurray for the international castizo, and for Madrid the once and future cosmopolitan city, in spite of some bumps here and there.