San Isidro: cocido, churros y chocolate (part 3 of 3)

Eating and drinking are fundamental, not incidental to the Fiesta de San Isidro

Waiting on line for the free cocido madrileño in the Parque San Isidro on the Día de San Isidro

Ok, I promise this is the last entry about San Isidro, but it was two days of cool and intense activity, with lots of photos and videos, and many interesting things, and while I was originally planning to make yesterday's entry "chotis, chulapos, and churros" I realized that song, dance, and funny costumes deserved their own entry separate from food, drink, and picnicking (not to mention the fairground ride and fireworks).

Possibly because a friend and fellow researcher I've met here is writing a dissertation about food and politics in 1940s Spain, and possibly because of older research interests of my own, I couldn't help but notice how much importance food is given in the fiestas de San Isidro.  This is a city which has known hunger, and a fair number of the popular songs for San Isidro come close to "food porn."  I was initially impressed on Sunday afternoon in the Plaza de Vistillas that the song which got the audience up from their chairs and dancing (as well as singing along) was something which I initially, listening, thought was a love song, but which actually I would classify more as a "food song" called "Cocidito madrileño."  (A few hours later I mentioned to the friends I was with that there appeared to have been a song dedicated entirely to cocido, whereupon the two of them - mother and daughter, both Madrid-born - exchanged sheepish grins and began to sing "cooocidito madrileñooo...")  Picture an entire plaza full of people singing "porque eres gloria pura, porque eres gloria pura, cocidito madrileño!" in a spasm of civic pride and hungriness and you get a sense of the scene.

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.

San Isidro in San Isidro (Part 1 of 3)

The fiestas of the patron saint of Madrid mark the unofficial beginning of summer here.   And obviously living in the "Barrio San Isidro" I couldn't miss them, right?

About a month ago I started seeing the signs going up around the city...

 

Clearly, San Isidro was going to be something of a big deal.