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.

La Dama Duende

Live theater is cool.

Last night I went with some Madrid friends to see the Teatro de la Comedia's production of Calderón de la Barca's comedy, La dama duende.  (Generally translated as "The Phantom Lady.") 

Gathering outside the newly renovated Teatro de la Comedia before the performance

The Teatro de la Comedia in on the Calle Príncipe, near Sol, and it's a beautiful old 19th C theater, with a proscenium arch, and boxes with red plush seats (we had a box) and it's also newly renovated, so all the gilt friezes and the fresco on the ceiling are all bright and shiny and the chandeliers are glittery, and most excellently it has super-titles (in Spanish) like the old City Opera above the stage for the hearing impaired, or those of us who have trouble listening to 17th century Spanish verse recited quickly by people who are trying to make it sound like natural speech and therefore slur their words.