I was recently in the City Museum, a place as fascinating as it is deserted. It tells in a fairly jumbled manner the history of Madrid, from its beginnings as a small Moor fortress village, to the more recent story of a major European capital. Exhibits are displayed somewhat haphazardly, teasingly leaving the visitor to work out how it fits in with everything else. Although displaying a variety of objects connected with the city, it seems to be particularly keen on plastic models, the kind of which I thought were destined to live out their photogenic lives in places as ostentatiously tacky as Mini-Europe. Not so here, as scale models of neighbourhoods, buildings, monuments, even of the airport were all on display. I admired these maquettes and, however condescendingly I may write about them, they probably furthered my understanding of the city. I did, however, do a double-take at this example of plastic craftsmanship. It was a fountain. Or, at least, it was a model of a fountain. With plastic water. And, over the protective glass case, people had dropped coins into it.
