The Official Blog of Author Robert Mykle

MADRID

After arriving in Madrid to a general strike protesting the austerity measures the European Union imposed on Spain to keep the country from following Greece and Iceland down the road to bankruptcy, I finally made the obligatory visit to the Bar Andaluz or Torre de Oro, the favorite watering hole of Los Amigos de Pamplona, in the Plaza Mayor where I made the traditional toast to friends and members of our peña, past and present; John, Charlie, Tom, Peter, Ed, Eric, Ton, Steve, even George with history. . ., and not to forget the ladies Gayle, Maggie, Marge, Bunny, Debbie . . . and after a third glass of Rioja red ad finitum.
The Plaza Mayor, an obligatory stop for all European cons and hustlers mixed in with the street venders, the mimes, and the gypsies, and the penchant of the Spanish to stay in the street all night, appears to be in a state of perpetual motion. I watched a bevy the pretty young things with long legs, stringy hair and sharp eyes pass over these fabled cobble stones, where Felipe III rode, and where that enlightened prince, Carlos III, according to an eighteenth century painting, watched an auto-de-fe. Here Napoleonic invaders marched followed a century later by church burning Republicans and Hemingway, Koestler and John Do Passos. So much history haunts this plaza even on this Spring idyllic afternoon.
I’ll drink to that.