MNF > Articles by: Madrid No Frills

Madrid No Frills

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Seven secrets of Retiro Park

There's a bunker, a hidden chess club, a haunting forest and a forgotten city-centre zoo, among a few other secrets held by the gatekeeper of Retiro Park. But dive in with the darkest, most disturbing secret of all: the 'human zoo'...
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Find your local no-frills bar and make it your local

"I'm on the corner of Street of the Miraculous, and Bitterness Street", laughs Mariano Casado Francisco. Rather than name his bar after the streets on which it resides, as so many no-frills bars do, he has named his bar after himself – the way his customers would inevitably have called it anyway.
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No frills, nostalgia and resistance at Madrid’s summer Fiestas

An elderly woman dressed in all black is straddling the wrong side of a first-floor balcony. Standing up there with her is another elderly woman wearing a floral smock, bellowing unsolicited advice about how her friend should tie up the bunting. Fierce high-rise arguing descending into laughing, and I watch on in horror yet reassurance that, somehow, these ladies have got it handled. After all, it is quite possibly their 90th year of decorating the streets.
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The inspiring wartime art of bomb-proofing windows

Futurism had a mini renaissance during the Spanish Civil War. The traditionally fascist art movement was briefly revived in an unexpected and ironic manner: to protect the people from the fallout of General Francisco Franco's air raids. 
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Haunting map of Madrid’s forgotten bunkers reveals Western Front

The sun is setting and I've spotted some wild rabbits – their white flickering tails really give them away. They're in an old trench digging diagonally into the pebbly soil, but possess no knowledge or concern over the possibility that they might be nesting alongside dismembered skeletons.