Affectionately, Madrid

It feels like Spring is taking a peak at us and it is only just February. Indeed, the days are getting “longer,” and already we in Madrid are beginning to commute to and from work in daylight. While walking through a park during the half light half dark part of the day’s end known as al anochecer, I saw something that is so commonplace in Spain – yet still fills me with a certain delight, like crocuses popping through the snow in New England.   It was a couple, standing on the edge of a park, entwined in one another, kissing.

Who knows whether they were saying hello or goodbye or had simply stopped along the way.  The only thing I can tell you is that for the length of time it took me to walk from one corner of the park to the diagonal other, they did not acknowledge any world but their own.

It wasn’t a particularly beautiful park, either.  There were no fountains or flowering shrubs; there wasn’t even grass.

Many people would say this sort of behavior belongs to France, perhaps Paris specifically.  But I can tell you that they are wrong.  In Madrid, you will find people in affection everywhere and of all kinds – from garish teenagers to grandparents slowly walking hand in hand.

There was a time in which I made a particular commute (by foot) and would frequently come upon the same older couple.  They’d always be walking together with about three feet between them – just enough space for an unleashed Brittany Spaniel to fit below their clasped hands.