Madrid-based writer and artist Lauren Klarfeld combines her love for the streets of Madrid with the people who walk them, and in this article, she reveals her secret project, Last Words For The Road.

In 1965, Spain’s tourism board published a handbook to Spain. It would become a highly collectable item of Franco’s ‘Visit Spain’ campaign – one of the dictator’s lasting legacies, seeding the mass tourism we’re so familiar with today.

In 1919 – the year of its inauguration – Madrid’s metro consisted of just one line with eight charming little stations. Exactly 100 years later, this vast subterranean labyrinth is the seventh-longest underground system in the world and hosts around two million journeys every day.

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’…

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. 

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.

I’ve spotted a growing movement on Instagram, and I seem to be part of it. Welcome to the Spanish community of retro typography hunters, who are acting fast to preserve Spain’s unlikely works of street art.

Welcome to the untimely ossuary of Madrid’s extinct shops, bars and restaurants – an emotive collection of defunct signage from Madrid’s long-lost traditional businesses.

Enrique Bordes and Luis de Sobrón, creators of the map Madrid Bombardeado 1936-1939, are part of a growing movement to expose the lost stories of the Spanish Civil War. They’re tracking down our city’s hidden wounds and opening them back up in the hope that by redressing them properly, they can finally heal. 

Hell’s bitter winds have suddenly reversed and the darkest visions of the Spanish Civil War have drifted back onto the streets of Madrid. And for this, we can thank Chicago-born artist Sebastian Maharg, who has made it possible for us to remember what many of us never even saw.

Recent exhibition La Tienda de la Esquina (The Corner Shop) celebrates Madrid’s beautiful antique facades. But, given these old shops are an increasingly endangered species in the Madrid streetscape, you may find yourself cynically wondering if these sculptures are actually miniature death masks.

When I took these photographs, I thought it would take a little longer than a couple of years for them to become an archive of the lost. 

From river launderettes and crucifix carpenters to streetlamp lighters and tinsmiths – in just the last few decades, countless jobs that had existed for centuries have disappeared.  Let’s take a glimpse of these lost trades and professions, because there’s a lot we can see in what no longer exists.

I’ve been working on revealing these restricted rooms for a little while now – negotiating access to locked spaces and requesting permission to take photos you won’t find anywhere else on the internet. And it’s all been worth it, because we finally get to see inside the most restricted corners of one of Madrid’s most emblematic buildings. But first, there are rules…

Madrid’s drinking fountains are beautiful, carefully designed and soaked in history. But, you’ve probably walked past dozens thinking very little of them – perhaps you thought they were miniature monuments, a fire hydrant or an electricity box.