I think I’ll take

 

El Retiro

The largest park in Madrid is located only fifteen fast walking minutes away from where I am living, conveniently in the general direction of the city center.   It provides me with a most welcome oasis of calm from a noisy and stressful young family’s flat.  El Retiro, or, to give it its full title, El Parque del buen retiro, is a vast and magnificent expanse of paths, trees, ponds and bushes that forms a green square kilometer completely surrounded by the rest of Madrid.  It is comfortably large enough to get lost in, and for a moment, wandering its deserted tracks on a Monday morning, you could be forgiven for forgetting you are right in the middle of a major city.

Although the cliché goes that El Retiro is Madrid’s answer to New York’s Central Park, it should probably be the other way round.  Designed and built in the earlier part of the 17th century, the park mainly catered for the royal court of the Hapsburgs and its entourage; undoubtedly offering a respite from Spanish summer for the hordes of sweating courtiers of arguably the world’s foremost power.   Under the reign of Philip IV, quite the art lover, it was conceived as one of the great artistic wonders of the renaissance, with statues and monuments punctuating its gardens à la française.  Despite many great political upheavals, the gardens of El Retiro survived the centuries more or less intact and were made public in 1868.

More than 140 years later, El Retiro remains as one of the main landmarks of the Spanish capital and soon became one of my favourite spots.  As indicated by its name, El Retiro is a pleasant retreat from both the bustling city of Madrid and the somewhat claustrophobic, all-crying and all-screaming, atmosphere of my host family.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, all five of my host family are exceedingly welcoming; yet there will always be moments when one just needs to get away from it all.  I happen to particularly enjoy being able to hear myself think, a luxury I can rarely afford while in my Spanish home, but one that I can enjoy hours of while in the Parque.  Many a morning, afternoon and even evening have I spent in peaceful meditation in the idyllic greenery of El Retiro.

That is not to say that the park is always deserted, even less that it is shunned by the locals.  In fact quite the opposite is true.  Whatever the time of day or the weather, an impressive assortment of madrileños can be found availing themselves of their city’s “lung”.  From the cyclists, a near extinct species on the streets, to the roller skaters of all shapes and sizes and the countless joggers; El Retiro is everybody’s favourite gym.  Spaniards of all ages are out there, from the young families in the many playgrounds to the elders of Madrid out on their morning paseo.  Then there are the alcohol-fuelled get-togethers, the hyptonising bongo circles, and probably the world’s highest concentration of rowing boats on one pond.  Finally, much like the world, El Retiro can be said to be a stage, as demonstrated by puppet theatres, magicians, tamers of various animals, fortune tellers, saxophone players, large and furry (if somewhat tatty) Disney characters and some rather feeble living statues.

All this contributes to making El Retiro an important landmark in Madrid, and one that I have a particular affection for.  For although changing its coat as the seasons pass, shedding its leaves and seeing its sunbathers disappear; El Retiro remains a very special place indeed for me, and one that I shall probably miss when we have to part company in a month’s time.