During the course of yesterday's long wander around the city center:
1) I found myself giving thanks for not having had the impulse to take that particular hike a week earlier, an impulse that would have put me in the middle of a sizeable political demonstration against the Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE), the current Spanish government's education reform law (try here for a clear explanation), convened by the fine folks in el Partido Popular in tandem with the Spanish Catholic Church.
Exactly how sizeable the demonstration turned out to be is impossible to say given the difference in attendance figures supplied by various sources.
The organizers claim that two million people took part, a figure that would make this demonstration twice as large as the genuinely mammoth protest that took place in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq. (Drastically unlikely, given that 90+% of the population was against the Iraq incursion -- cutting across the political spectrum to include everyone except Partido Popular politicians and their most hard core militantes.) La Comunidad de Madrid (currently run by the PP) proclaimed attendance of 1,500,000 people. The police put the figure at 407,000. El País, the country's largest-selling daily newspaper -- and generally a lefty stronghold -- fixed the turnout at 375,000.
A bizarrely, comically huge spread, and I suspect the actual number to be somewhere in the general neighborhood of the police estimate. During the big anti-invasion protest in 2003, the center was so clogged with people that the sprawl reached this neighborhood, a ten-minute walk away, the overflow leaving local streets notably more crowded than normal. Last Saturday, with the anti-LOE demonstration happening in the same zone, I saw no evidence of it here, the streets no busier than on a normal Saturday. So that I actually forgot about the protest until I saw it mentioned on the tube that night.
Since then, the organizers/PP and the government have been going back and forth, the papers and news programs giving it plenty of play, 'it' feeling like a lot of noise about not very much, the real issue perhaps being the ongoing jockeying for power.
2) Somewhere along the way, I came across a store piping Christmas muzak out into the street, my first encounter with that this year. The tune immediately took up residence in my head, a key part of the melody playing itself over and over until I realized I was beginning to walk in time to it. Desperate to change the soundtrack, I managed to reprogram my internal jukebox with the Vince Guaraldi version of Oh, Christmas Tree. Something I at least like. Which got me jonesing to hear the real item. Once home, I searched through the handful of CDs I dragged along from the States, discovering I'd forgotten to include the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, a CD that's grown on me in an embarrassing way in recent years. (At least the actual Vince Guaraldi tracks.) Whistling it will have to do until the return to Vermont.
That was yesterday morning. Last night, the teams with the biggest rivalry in the Spanish fútbol league went head to head, Real Madrid hosting Barcelona at el Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. A face-off that is traditionally the season's hottest ticket, the winning team/city reaping bragging rights until the next confrontation, months away. Madrid -- Spain's version of the Yankees, with some of the biggest names in world fútbol on its roster -- has been plagued by injuries, their on-field chemistry inconsistent. So it came as no surprise when they found themselves outplayed and outclassed, on the losing end of a 3-0 score. Even more disconcerting to some Madrid players: the ovation given to Ronaldinho after his second goal, the general appreciation for a rival team playing excellent ball. And it was interesting to note the overall acceptance of Barcelona's current superiority in this morning's sports section, coupled with a kind of metaphoric shoulder-shrugging with respect to R.M. The team's inconsistency during these last years seems to have been accepted with resigned, fatalistic aplomb. Or something.
Matches, like most everything in this life, come and go. Existence moves on.
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Enhanced mailbox, la Calle de Alcalá:
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 10:06 AM [+]
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