The main event this week was a short trip to Madrid where I was participating in a conference on IP-based financing, organised on the margins of the annual Ibero-American summit. And of course there were the usual beach walks.
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Sunrise is a bit after 8 a.m. now, so my morning walks are often while it is still dark. The exercise crew on the beach continues their activities as usual, on this occasion with some artificial lighting:
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A “found” image of discarded art:
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On Thursday afternoon I took the high-speed train to Madrid, arriving around 6 p.m. I had chosen a small hotel in a lively neighbourhood, and it turned out just fine. Next to the hotel was this neighbourhood bar where I went to quench my thirst after checking in:
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I enjoyed my pint while looking around in the bar. It was a really cozy (and inexpensive) place:
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During the time I was there, the bar got quite crowded. It was clearly a popular place, and many of the guests seemed to be steady customers:
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My hotel was next to the Plaza Antón Martín. In the centre of the square there is a monument to the “Atocha lawyers”, a group of progressive lawyers who were murdered by fascist terrorists in 1977, two years after Franco’s death, when Spain’s transition to democracy was still a work in progress:
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Madrid has many monuments to the great and good (some not so much so, like Columbus), including this bust of the essayist and philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955):
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I decided to visit Madrid’s central square, Plaza del Sol, to have a look at the encampment that had been erected a few days earlier as a protest against Spain’s high housing costs, spurred by the eviction of 87-year old Maricarmen Abascal from an apartment in which she had lived most of her life. Rents have risen in Spain in recent years to a level where many young people are forced to live with their parents well into adulthood. So while the concrete case of Maricarmen Abascal has in the meantime been resolved (the new owner of the building has agreed to let her come back, paying just a slightly higher rent), the widespread anger about the housing crisis remains and has led to demonstrations all over Spain. The focal point in Madrid is Sol, so I wanted to have a look. As I was walking up the stairs from the Sol metro station, it was clear that something special was happening–the crowds were much denser than normal. Once I emerged onto the square, the first sight greeting me was this group of people making signs:
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There were many different signs on the tents, including this one, rather crude, referring to the conservative president of the Madrid regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The signs says “Ayuso, I shit in your mouth”:
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A sarcastic “for rent” sign. For reference, the median salary in Spain is a bit above 2000 Euros per month:
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Dispensing advice on rent issues:
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After walking around the Sol square for a while, I walked up one of the pedestrian streets emanating from the square, sat down with a beer at an outside table, and looked at the traffic passing by:
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Back in Alicante, my pre-dawn Saturday morning walk:
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It is now autumn, and on some mornings the sky over El Campello looks like this:
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That afternoon, I went to 100 Montaditos for a beer. It was very windy on the beach, but it was still warm, and the water in the Mediterranean is also still quite suitable for bathing:
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When I walked Mochi that evening, I saw a man with a metal detector, looking for coins that people may have dropped while playing beach volleyball:
More photos from the Sol encampment can be seen here.