Madrid Stories

Elizabeth Nash is glad to see signs of intellectual life returning to the city as Madrileños flock to the revitalised Resi. But where are they going to park?

The Spanish capital's intellectual life is widely considered to be undergoing a dull phase, attributable to an unimaginative right-wing government, the continuing consumer boom and an ingrained preference for rapid speech and impetuous spontaneity over reflective thought.

So I was surprised to find Madrid's venerable crucible of avant-garde ideas, the Students' Residence, bubbling with enthusiasm and, even more astonishingly, prosperity. The "Resi" has a boring name but an illustrious reputation as the place where Lorca, Dali and Buñuel became friends in the 1920s and between them produced the first stirrings of Surrealism in Spain. They used to take the 150 tram to Madrid's centre for the theatre or the brothels, or to mount Surrealist escapades in the bar of the Ritz.

I live near the Ritz, so I took the 150 – which still runs, but is a bus nowadays – for a seminar at the Resi on the legend of Don Juan. This quintessentially Spanish seducer and betrayer of innocent females is the fictional creation of a renegade 17th-century priest. He was the man who barely embarked upon one conquest before plotting his escape and planning the next, and whose pleasure lay not in the act of seduction, but in boasting of it to his mates.

"Why does every Spaniard think he is or could be Don Juan?" asked a panel of academics, writers, actors and other enthusiasts, before a delighted audience of the same, plus students forced to study Spain's two classic plays on the anti-hero for exams. "It's because he is a seducer, and women love to be seduced," said one. "No, it's because each innocent girl thinks she can tame his promiscuity, so he has an endless supply of fresh meat," said another. "It's a male fantasy that everyone knows is impossible in the real world," said a third.

Then the feminists jumped in: Don Juan is repulsive because he besmirches every Spaniard's sense of honour by ruining his victims, then bragging about it. His victims were stupid to be gulled by his patent lies. He was ill. He was homosexual. In reality he hated women. And so on. You had to keep reminding yourself this was a literary invention they were arguing about so passionately, not a real person.

The room into which the bohemian crowd packed on a filthy night (eccentric hats, woolly scarves, beards much in evidence) had been exquisitely remodelled in the austere Art Deco style of the original building. We lolled on post-modern sofas lining the walls.

The Resi was silenced for decades by Franco, and gradually revived during the 1980s and 1990s. But within the past couple of years it has blossomed. It is completely renovated, with an elegant restaurant, bar and cafeteria, luxurious rugs designed by Lorca's niece Laura and projects galore, including adventurous celebrations of poets and architects shunned for decades for being gay or communist or both.

How to explain this glorious renaissance? The Resi, it seems, is generously supported by Jose Maria Aznar's conservative government and the Prime Minister is a huge fan. The man with the intellectual brio of the tax inspector he once was loves to accept invitations from the institution that best represents Spain's pre-Franco, anti-Francoist progressive intelligentsia. That's the biggest surprise of all.

Madrid has discovered the parking meter, which has brought a new bureaucratic twist to the city's traffic chaos. Residents buy a green sticker entitling the holder to unlimited parking in 75 per cent of green spaces or, for more money and fewer minutes, in blue spaces. I simplify, obviously.

The meters resemble consoles for intergalactic travel rather than purveyors of windscreen stickers, and are enforced by uniformed squads in Smart cars who slap fines on transgressors.

Iron bollards and concrete planters further curb the excesses of Madrileños' vehicular anarchy, without fundamentally affecting the city's permanent gridlock. One sceptical friend who lives outside the centre asks: is there a black market in counterfeit green stickers, and what's the going rate?