Day 1: Madrid; art, tapas, bull fighting

A Picasso in the Museo del Reina Sofia

The highlight of the modern art musem was Picasso's Guernica, a mural-sized artwork of the late 30's evoking the terror and chaos of the Spanish civil war.  I was scolded for taking the photo to the right of another of Picasso's sketches from the same time, so the depiction of Guernica below I lifted from google image search.  I've also included an image of the ruins of the city of Guernica after the 1937 bombing which inspired the painting.

The exhibit included photographs of the work in progress, which showed major changes of direction from Picasso's initial full-size sketch and the final painting.  For example, the bull's head in the left-hand corner was connected to a full body (which you can see the outlines of) and the light above the horse was entirely absent, as most of the original work was shown as being outside.

We also saw a book published shortly after the war entitled Salud!  Stories, Poems, and Sketches of Spain by American Authors which you can read the full text of here.

Picasso's Guernica

Guernica after the bombing of 1937

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After the museum and a short siesta (which David considers near-compulsory) we went in search of our first tapas restaurant.  The truely traditional tapas bar is, literally, a bar for drinking.  As you stand and drink with your friends small plates of food are brought for free or for a small price.  

Our first tapas restaurant was selected for the English subtitles on its menu, its reasonable prices and its proximity at the moment we decided we were too hungry to keep walking.

Inside, there were a few people seated at a decorative tile-lined bar watching a televised bull fight and several high tables with stools lining the room's perimeter.  The barman was using a deli meat slicer set on the bar to cut ham for a charcuterie board while joking with the two children of a woman picking up some meat to go.  A young mother helped her baby tentatively traverse the length of the restaurant to the smiling encouragement of some tourists like us at the tables.

We ended up ordering a strange mix of dishes:  several thin, crispy, deep fried shrimp pancakes, a cod salad, and something billed as "grandma's" meat stew sandwich (which was indeed like stew in a sandwich).  Maria had a sangria, the recipe of which she speculated upon for the rest of the night, and I had a very nice glass of red wine (for 2 euros, compared with 1.5 euros for water!).

Of the televised bullfight, coverage alternated between the fight itself, interviews with the bullfighers, and slow-motion replays of banderilleros narrowly escaping being gored, or, in one case, not.  During the few minutes we watched, three men with capes edged repeatedly closer to the bull who was breathing heavily, head lowered, festooned lances dangling limply from barbs embedded in its shoulder.  A tight shot revealed the bull's entire shoulder and side to be slick with blood.  One of the men managed to provoke it into a short series of weak lunges before it returned to seeming too confused or possibly exhausted for continued effort.

Maria later commented that the fight used the animal's natural instincts against it for others' entertainment—not unlike American reality television (though with fatal consequences to an unwilling participant, in the case of the fight).  The role of the men we saw (the banderillas) is to stab the bull while running as close to it as possible to demonstrate bravery.  From my admittedly short viewing, they seemed no more brave or admirable than bullies.