Went to see a show last Thursday night with a couple of folks from class. On arriving home around 11:15, I found a guy at work across the street putting up row after row of posters of the same nekkid male dancers that appeared briefly on that same wall a week or two back. Same place, same formation -- three rows high, 10 or so posters long. If you're standing some distance away, it looks like a block of postage stamps, until you remember that no government currently in existence is going to be issuing a commemorative for the Tomas Dancers any time soon.
When I left home the next midday, they were gone, covered up by a whole new crop of posters, including a huge one for Attika, which turns out to be an Italian telecommunications outfit, not a band. Since then, posters have come and gone at a furious pace. As if a particularly ferocious form of Darwinism is at work in the neighborhood.
A short time ago, around 6 p.m., the sound of a compressor started up down in the street. A strident, annoying compressor. After ten minutes, I leaned out a window to scope the situation. The City of Madrid had sent a crew out once again to strip the wall clean. Most posters had already come down, the crew worked on the remnants with a high-pressure water sprayer, a process that left the street thoroughly confetti'd, giving it a festive, if sodden, look.
I moved in here on Sept. 9th. In the six or so weeks since then, the City has taken down the posters roughly every two weeks, without doing anything to ensure that the wall will stay clean and poster-free. I've wondered about this, and it occurs to me that maybe there's not much to ponder. Maybe this is simply part of the cycle of life here, not a futile expenditure of energy. Maybe this kind of work gives the city cleaning crews a break from sweeping up after all-night parties in this and other barrios every weekend. Who knows?