Cambio del Aire!

A CHANGE in the weather looms large in the closing week of fine and holy April. Sol watches me again as I walk briskly from palatial place to metro mouth, to be spat out on the other side of central Spain among the business elite and all others suited to sweat off the sweetness of precrisis prosperity. Vegetation multiplies and expands its fingertips into vision's scope so that even when ruffled with fluctuating temps and angry winds, one senses the gentler side of Primavera the Conqueror. In fact, in certain hours on certain days it takes no imagination when the sun burns down on black-jacketed back walking through one of the city's thousand and three plazas. And, oh yes, the celebrations of coming seasonal salubrity

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Even now with concrete, tempered glass, and a warm stove, there is cause for celebration when the world turns its other cheek and life begins again. Spring festivals may be considered among the world's most passionate. More research must be done on that... Now, of course, our venue is Spain, the world's most festive peopled pais (more research can't hurt...). Combine that with such anniversaries as the 201st year since the Spanish, or to be exact, the Madrileños said vehemently (and ultimately martyrously) "F*ck that!" to both their own governors and the French occupiers to whom said government was hewing, and the life/death of Madrid's patron peasant saint San Isidro, and you have yourself a month set to alter the Earth's rotation. Friends, lovers, compatriates of old and new, heed the call and make your way by hook or by crook to the land where the sun also rises, because things may never be the same.

Expect many more fotosandposts, as I try to track down whatever it is that makes Madrid so Madrid before the turning of another moon and the fortutious series of successive weekend visits from the best of all corners of this world bring mayhem on a Pantagruelian scale...