We are now in full festive season in this highly catholic country, and the time has come to celebrate the birth of Christ, or El Niño as he is affectionately referred to here. The streets are lit up with good tidings, transforming downtown Madrid into a display so festive it is only a matter of time before a confused jumbo jet pilot tries to land on the Gran Vía. Apart from finally putting Madrid on the map of what can be seen from space, the decorations have brought much Christmas cheer to the freezing Madrileños, as well as a polar-bear-crushingly vast carbon footprint.
These luminous delights are of many different varieties and put Joseph’s coat to shame in terms of technicolouration. A crib scene can be found at every corner, and the main thoroughfares of Salamanca are lit not only by the usual Christmas fare of stars, reindeer and snowmen, but by a wide range of words from the “Christmassy” semantic field, such as JOY, PEACE, as well the somewhat contradictory terms “FIESTA” and “QUIETUD”.
The Paseo de la Castellana, on the other hand, has gone down a distinctly modern route as regards this year’s decorations, leaving the boulevard resembling some kind of evil cross between the Tate Modern and a fluorescent-themed 80s rave. Giant pink cones adorn the 18th Century walkways and at night the avenue is lit with wreaths of a colour scheme which seems specially conceived to explain the word “garish” to illiterate Spaniards.
However, this is far from the most evil of displays to be found in the Spanish capital, which is the main subject of this post. Indeed, all the above glitterings pale into insignificance next to this most sinister of exhibits.
Over the Plaza Felipe II has descended a fearsome collection of ghastly plastic figures, all part of the winter wonderland set up by the all-powerful department store El Corte Inglés and dubbed with the rather cringeworthy title of Cortylandia. It is basically a vast paying playground which supposedly has some sort of a Christmassy theme to it. But there is nothing bad about feeble theme parks per se, indeed it is something else altogether that makes Cortylandia so special. I am of course referring to the aforementioned ghastly plastic figures.
Malevolent grinning elves with pointed hats are everywhere and make the whole area feel like some Lemony Snicket joke come to life. It is difficult to find words powerful enough to describe the aura of sheer evil emanating from these impassive, cruelly
smiling plastic faces, but luckily I managed to snap a few photos of the sinister spectacle. I could see things were about to kick off, so I got outta there.
As you can no doubt appreciate, it takes a braver man than me to stand up to the terrifying
inhabitants of Cortylandia, so I have chosen this point in my blog to announce my imminent return to my family in Brussels. Tomorrow in fact. But fear not, I shall be back soon with a little conclusion on the scarcely reported end to my Madrid months.








