Culture

During lockdown, the nightly applause for healthcare workers here must have been epic. Thousands of people opened their windows onto their wide, windy boulevards and, for a few minutes, clapped as one giant entity within Spain's biggest human beehive.

La Guindalera's traditional high streets and beautiful no-frills bars set it apart from its upmarket neighbour of Salamanca, writes Suzanne McCullagh, a resident and advocate of the area.

Welcome to the golden age of ceramic art that took Madrid by storm, until the dictatorship and renovation works meant that all these beautiful old works of art were covered, sealed up and entombed for a future accidental renaissance which is happening right now.

Last Sunday, hundreds of market stall holders occupied the streets of the Rastro to defend their right to reopen their stalls and to preserve an ancient Madrid tradition. The same leafy street, lined with numbered buttons marking the location of each stall, was suddenly bustling again but with cries, chants and a live klezmer version of Bella Ciao. 

I'd had a tip-off that the neighbours of Calle Carlos Arniches had taken lockdown solidarity to knew heights, so I decided to take a short stroll to see if it was true.

I'd like to transport you to a place a few miles up the road from where I grew up. It's a tiny, windswept port town that had its heyday up until the 1960s. After that, the industries shifted outwards, like the dunes that shield Blyth from the North Sea, switching from mining coal to farming wind.