Justo frente al museo, varios artistas locales instalan sus puestos para exhibir y vender sus obras. Entre ellos se encuentra Antonio Castor, ya preparado para otra jornada de trabajo. Vistiendo un saco bordó y acompañado de su libro y sus pinturas, observa expectante el pasar de los transeúntes.
Immigrant exploitation is all around us. Many of Spain’s 600,000 undocumented migrants are essential workers, They pick Europe’s vegetables and keep them cheap, they take care of the elderly, clean the hospitals, deliver us food, build our homes and allow us to stay confined in them during the pandemic. Institutional exploitation of immigrants must stop, and that is exactly what Regularización Ya are here to do.
El Alamín, meaning ‘the world’ in Arabic, is an abandoned village on the outskirts of Madrid. A walk along the three streets of El Alamín reveals the world that a pro-Franco solider intended to build there in 1956. Juan Claudio Güell y Churruca, also known as the fourth Marquis de Comillas, fought on the national side during the Spanish Civil War. His militant legacy influenced the utilitarian architecture and planning of El Alamín: it’s of a communist-style with a touch of Christianity, established to populate tobacco and cotton farmers.
I don’t use the word cool very often, but having your photographs turned into hand-drawn works of art? Now that’s cool. Welcome to my first ever art collection of local artists’ paintings and illustrations inspired by my photographs of Madrid.
Saturday 8pm, May 2, 2020 will be a moment I remember for the rest of my life as the night Madrid took back its city for the first time… in decades.
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.
As Madrid remains the European epicentre of the coronavirus crisis, the city’s most marginalised groups have been pushed even closer to the edge. Once dependent on charities and local organisations, many migrants are suddenly fending for themselves, but not if the Lavapiés Dragons have anything to do with it.
At 94, Abuelo’s physical health is enviable to many who are decades younger. These days, his biggest health worry is not coronavirus-related, but that “estas piernas se me están resistiendo”.
The fight against coronavirus echoes something hauntingly familiar in Spain, and it’s from this dark period in history that local artist Félix Rodriguez has found inspiration. From the confines of his home in Madrid where he remains, like the rest of us, under lockdown, a renaissance is happening.
Zoom out of Madrid on Google satellite view and red clusters begin to emerge. Between grey, gridded avenues and barren parks, see clusters of winding narrow streets with red roof tiles and tiny plazas, which were once independent towns with their own culture, economy and architecture. Today, even though they lie well within the city limits of Madrid, they remain different.
The bares típicos are one of the things I deeply love Spain for. The way you can pop in for a coffee in a glass, a caña, a tapa, a few words with the person behind the bar and other people in the bar – a sense of connection to simple uplifting things.
A year ago, my photo series of 100 of Madrid’s no-frills bars reignited the nation’s love for a time-honoured aspect of Spanish culture, but around 20 of these no-frills bars are actually Chinese-owned.
I’m sitting on a concrete bench on Plaza Nelson Mandela, taking in the warm winter sun on my face. A local Senegalese man wearing an ivory silk boubou pours his friends cups of hot black coffee from a canister. On a bench near them, a group of young Argentinians top up their cups of mate and share a smoke.
Iván, es un heredero de este movimiento contra-cultural, que se desarrolló en gran parte en Malasaña.
This summer, children living in Sector 6 of the Cañada Real (Europe’s largest shanty town, just a 15-minute drive from Madrid) were given disposable cameras by photographer Carlos Gutiérrez, who asked them to take pictures of their day-to-day lives.