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Madrid, the economic, administrative and, of course, cultural capital of Spain. We review some of the readings we have reviewed in Madrid Secreto and compile them in one article. Here are seventeen good books set in Madrid.
1. The secret image of Montero Glez( Pepitas Editorial, 2019)
Montero Glez uses an interview with García Alix to present a Madrid that no longer exists and that evidently will not return (“For those of us who grew up in an old Madrid, our memory leads us to crawl through streets where there are still cowsheds built into the buildings. It is the Madrid of the corrals, the Madrid of the ragpickers and the sharpener, the Madrid of the serenos who were called “dando palmas”). And also to present the cultural elite of a marginal movement: marginal for being created in the margins, marginal for not having instant recognition. A multidisciplinary marginal elite that is integrated by Iván Zulueta, by Camarón, by Ceesepe, by García Alix himself or by Montero Glez. A cultural elite that “is the music that one fine day, or one fine afternoon, picked up at El Rastro in Madrid where it all began at the end of the seventies of the last century”.
This cultural elite (the concept of elite does not seem to me to be particularly appropriate and obviously does not refer to the socioeconomic position of its members) has the morphology of a generation. Or Generation. Generation is a term, in general, quite impoverished: a mere contextual factor is enough to agglutinate a whole bunch of authors under the generational concept. Generation, if we are to understand it like the Beats, would refer to a union not only temporally, but also affectively and even collaboratively. Something that does or did exist here; something that Montero Glez gives a good account of.
A.D.N.
2. Lo que cuentan los niños by Elena Fortún (Renacimiento, 2019)
The title -Loque cuentan los niños (Renacimiento, 2019)- is suggestive enough, expository and meridian enough to go into talking about the synopsis. Even so: What children count is the intention, the will and the action to put the focus on the most unprotected sector of society (the one, moreover, that has been precociously integrated into working life) and to know what they have to say. Elena Fortún, in short, interviews working children.
In these pages, the most social, traditional and popular Madrid of the time emerges. A story of Madrid that is not built by the bourgeoisie, but by children with names, jobs and surnames. In fact, the bourgeoisie is the target audience of the message, which was published in Gente Menuda, the children’s supplement of ABC. Elena Fortún, then, is only the catalyst or messenger of a message that has in children the senders and receivers. In fact, the class difference that Fortún foresees is so notorious that he often clarifies certain issues because he knows that children from the wealthy classes will not understand them.
A.D.N.
3. Yas by Eduardo de los Santos (Alfaguara, 2020)
The literature of Madrid in 2020, if you think about it, is a blank canvas. Or, better, a canvas with compartments on which each writer can develop his or her stories. This does not happen, for example, with Barcelona, which is a recognizable city from the literary trope: the demonization of tourism or independence -although Cercas in his last novel has made an unprecedented pirouette to avoid both topics- are recurrent and necessary tropes for the drawing of the city (Zanón, Morales, Torné…) in 2020. In Madrid, I say, that does not happen because Madrid does not generate a common opinion and because there has not been written a-great-book set in Madrid in the last 10 years (another topic would be to make a reading of Jonás Trueba’s urban portrait, but we already say that is another topic).
Eduardo de los Santos has written his first novel-Yas (Alfaguara, 2020)- and already in the first sentence of the book he gives a hint of this: “Madrid is still a city of more than a million corpses and they all look alike to me”. More than a million corpses as a huge number of zombies swarming, wandering, like the characters in the novel.
A.D.N.
4. The Modlins by Paco Gómez (Fracaso Books, 2015)
Antonio told me that a story I had told him reminded him of Los Modlin; I told him I had no idea what he was talking about; he passed me the trailer of a documentary; I asked him where I could see it; he told me he didn’t know, that he saw it in Matadero back in the day; I looked for it in Filmin, in Netflix, in YouTube, in HBO and in Movistar + and I failed in my search. I became obsessed and frustrated, until I thought of a friend who works in a production company, I asked her if she knew where I could find that documentary, she said yes, that she was a personal friend of the director and that she was going to ask him: she passed me a link to the documentary. I saw it, fulfilled my needs and I, who believe that happiness is double if it is shared (sic), passed it on to everyone for whom I feel a minimum of appreciation.
The story faded in my memory and (spoiler) became part of a list of surnames I have in my cell phone: family lineages that ended, that’s the name of the list. Later, looking for books to review in this medium that feeds me, I found that the story of the Modlins is not only a documentary, but also a book. A book by Paco Gómez. And after reading it, I also found that the value of the book is unquestionable and superlatively superior to that of the documentary (read it and you will know why I say so). I say that, after reading it, I felt empty, orphan of a story, and I wanted to contribute (as far as possible -with all the humility in the world, eh, I’m no megalomaniac- and with the work of Pablo Pou and Antonio Delgado, camera and video editor respectively) to fulfill the Modlin’s dream. To continue what Paco Gómez started and to refer here to the Roman maxim: humans die twice: first biologically, then in memory. In that sense, our contribution (I insist) would be to endow a timeless, bohemian and magnetic family with a memorable immortality. To the Modlins.
A.D.N.
5. Europa by David Llorente (Alrevés, 2019)
If we were to put in a shaker Mind Hunter, Madrid (as a setting), Akira, something from Death Note, Rendición by Loriga, some Foucauldian concepts, Blade Runner, some Agota Kristoff’s work as well, another bit of biblical storytelling and a civilization-building video game like Age of Empire, it is quite possible that the resulting paste would have a color similar to that of Europa (Alrevés, 2019) by David Llorente.
Europa -and I say this fleeing from the adjective “unclassifiable” and thinking that it is not necessary to classify the novel by categories, although it makes it easier for me as a critic and for the possible reader of this article (I understand), the possibility of knowing what kind of book we are talking about- is a black, social, technological, nihilistic, psychotic, postmodern, dreamlike, environmental novel.
A.D.N.
6. That damned wall of Flako (Libros del K.O, 2019)
Two months before his 16th birthday, Flako saw his father walk out of a sewer with 23 million pesetas. From then on, bank robbery became his profession.
Accused of committing seven bank robberies using the butrón technique, his story came close to winning a Goya award with the feature film Apuntes para una película de atracos, and the publishing house Libros del K.O. published his autobiography under the title Esa maldita pared.
A.P.C.
7. The Infinite City by Sergio C. Fanjul (Reservoir Books, 2019)
Sergio C. Fanjul is an astrophysicist converted to journalism and poetry. He is also an urban walker, a flâneur flâneur contemporary of costumbrist look and restless feet that has turned Madrid into the focus of his wanderings and the epicenter of his stories.
Throughout his literary career he has published four collections of poems, a book of short stories and a compilation of his texts shared on Facebook. His latest work is La ciudad infinita (Reservoir Books, 2019), a long walk with a stop in the 21 districts of the capital where he brings together history, philosophy, anecdotes, reflections and spontaneous witticisms.
He left his native Oviedo to move to Madrid in 2001. Once there, he started walking. At each step he discovered before his feet and before his eyes an endless brick city whose neighborhoods were endowed with their own personality. La ciudad infinita is a personal description of the capital and its characters, an exhaustive observation of Madrid’s life.
L.M.
8. Microgeographies of Madrid by Belén Bermejo (Plan B, 2019)
Belén Bermejo was a literary editor who took pictures, but was not a photographer. She was more of a walker with a good eye who had a weakness for the decadence of ignored nooks and crannies. A Vivian Maier of the 21st century who portrayed the places no one else noticed and endowed them with dignity.
His camera, sometimes his cell phone camera, finds life in the anodyne. Bermejo detected the personality of a peeling wall, an old door, a wet floor. He focused and shot. This is how it gives back its importance to the city’s undervalued landscapes.
Microgeographies of Madrid (Plan B, 2019) is an album with portraits of forgotten corners that Bermejo compiled during a work leave. The proceeds from the book will go entirely to the Medical Oncology area of the Hospital de La Princesa in Madrid.
L.M.
9. Portrait of Madrid by Javier Aranburu (Anaya PhotoClub, 2020)
Desolate, festive, frenetic, authentic, imposing Madrid, autumnal neighborhood. The collection of images that Javier Aranburu compiles in his photobook brings together the thousand facets of a city that changes its personality depending on the point at which the camera looks.
This is a book to eat Madrid with your eyes and feel the capital in a single glance, or stop on a page and recreate yourself in the light of a sunset, the reflection of a monument in the water or the frozen movement of a street that never sleeps.
The best way to get to know this city is to live it; the second best way is to spend some time with Retrato de Madrid.
L.M.
10. Masterpiece ( Anagrama, 2022) by Juan Tallón
Galician journalist Juan Tallón is a regular contributor to various media and has several novels and essays to his credit, such as the gems of Rewind, Libros peligrosos and Mientras haya bares. A chronicler with a sharp eye and an agile verb, Tallón knows to the millimeter the comings and goings of the city where he has lived for several lustrums.
In Obra maestra ( Anagrama, 2022), the author starts from a real, unusual and promising fact: the Reina Sofía Museum one of the vertexes of the Art Triangle decides to recover a 38-ton piece by the American artist Richard Serra. When the team reclaims the artwork, which is part of the gallery’s extensive holdings, they discover to their horror that the four steel Blocs that make up the piece have simply disappeared.
Through the testimony of the unexpected actors involved in the event, Tallón gives an account of a fascinating hypothesis, halfway between fantasy and true story, which could only happen in a city like Madrid.
S.M.
11. Todos estábamos vivos by Enrique Llamas (AdN, 2020)
Any portrait of the recent history of Madrid is inconceivable without a review of all that La Movida entailed. Without ignoring the extent to which the countercultural movement marked an entire generation, Enrique Llamas proposes with his second novel to park its mythification.
It does so through a choral story in which he narrates what it was like to be young in Madrid in the early 80s, with all the range of grays that this implies. Scenarios such as the Penta or Milky Way are witness to the awakening of the characters, embarked on a search for themselves marred by the demons of a city given over to debauchery and excess. A tribute to those who fell in the attempt and left too soon, to the other side of La Movida madrileña.
S.T.
12. The Meek Friend by Benito Pérez Galdós ( 1882)
In El amigo Manso, Galdós presents a mid-19th century modern Madrid, which is very close to those of us who live in the city today. In this book Galdós had begun the series of Novelas Españolas Contemporáneas, which consists of 21 works and deals with the Madrid society of the Restoration. A very necessary classic to understand the evolution of the city and those who have inhabited it. It is also a good work to learn more about this great of Spanish literature, besides in the main character himself there are some traits of Galdós, eternal bachelor, wise and methodical, who without being from Madrid knows the city inside out.
It is a changing and growing Madrid, specifically the widening of the Puerta del Sol, the demolition of houses to lengthen Bailén Street and an uncertain political feeling in a climate, however, abundant thanks to the money brought back by many Spaniards who returned after succeeding in America, the so-called Indianos, as is the case of Manso’s own brother. He, so temperate, cultured and rational, meets the middle and upper classes of Madrid, whom he tries to influence, always thanks to his mother’s contacts, but without success he ends up disappointed and frustrated.
E.F.
13. Modern Terrorists by Cristina Morales (Candaya, 2017)
That Cristina Morales the fact that it won the Herralde Prize a few years ago is good news in itself, but tangentially it is also good news because it allowed (it allowed me) to learn about the existence of Terroristas modernos, perhaps one of the most interesting historicist novels of recent years.
Modern Terrorists is set in Madrid at the beginning of the 19th century and takes place in a Spain that has managed to resist the Napoleonic invasion. The plot -to put it briefly- is the resistance baptized as “the Conspiracy of the Triangle”, a secret society that sought to overthrow Fernando VII.
Morales, in order to write it, was thoroughly immersed in the Spanish he used. As an example, not a single word was written that was not in widespread use at the time of the book’s setting.
A.D.N.
14. The Millions of Santiago Lorenzo (Blackie Books, 2010)
It is always a pleasure to peek into the peculiar, astrakhan and jardiel-poncelesque universe of Santiago Lorenzo. Any of his novels -Lasganas, The disgusting the Orphans, The Orphans or the one we are dealing with here – could be described here as good books set in Madrid, but The Millions takes place more profusely (or so I remember) in Madrid settings.
The plot immediately invites you to go straight to any bookstore near you to buy it: a man who is a member of the GRAPO -and consequently does not have an ID card because terrorists do not have ID cards- wins the lottery and cannot collect it -because he does not have an ID card. From that point on, everything is a series of hilarious, intelligent and well-plotted situations that, of course, have Madrid as a backdrop.
A.D.N.
15. We were untamed. The missing trades of the women of Madrid, by Victoria Gallardo (La Librería, 2021)
“The idea of writing this book comes when I stop to think what I know about the women who lived in Madrid before me, in the city where I was born and where I have been living for 30 years. And I realize that they are practically unknown to me,” the author and journalist told us, Victoria Gallardo.
With these words Gallardo justified the need to write “We were untamed“A book that after much research and through the direct testimonies of daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters, recovers a fundamental part of the history of the city: that of all those women (greengrocers, laundresses, water carriers, dressmakers, telephone operators, chestnut sellers or Metro ticket agents) who helped shape the Madrid of yesteryear -and today-, and how sorority was already then a common point in their demands.
The book takes us through a black and white Madrid of places that many of us have already known in color, such as the Mercado de La Cebada, the Telefónica Building, the Manzanares or the Embajadores neighborhood.
I.N.R.
16. notebook of found phrases, by Juan Berrio (self-published, 2013)
Like a mosaic made from the lives of others. This is how one could define the book by cartoonist, photographer and illustrator Juan Berrio, in which he collects years of fragments of conversations he accidentally witnessed while walking.
Among these “phrases found“In the form of illustrations, you can find pearls of popular wisdom, banalities, phrases that border on the absurd and others that impress with their crudeness. All of them are spread over a very personal map of Madrid with the Templo de Debod, Conde Duque, Galileo, San Bernardo or the Sabatini Gardens as a backdrop, and other cities such as Jaca, Barcelona or Toulouse.
Although the book cannot be found in bookstores (and in the absence of, in the future, the author materializing a possible reprint), the more than 800 sentences he collected between 2009 and 2017 can be found in his blog.
I.N.R.
17. Existiríamos el mar, by Belén Gopegui (Literatura Random House, 2021)
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It is difficult, once you have opened a book by Belén Gopegui, not to close it with the desire -perhaps also, in a way, with the need- to want to read more by the author. Existiríamos el mar, his latest novel -and possibly one of the few stories born in pandemia that does not deliberately avoid making reference to the pandemic-, takes place at number 26 Martín de Vargas Street in Madrid: an ocean (in its own way) in the middle of the capital.
Lena, Hugo, Ramiro, Camelia and Jara are a group of adults who, in their 40s, share an apartment: not only out of necessity, but also out of the conviction that there is -there has to be- another way of living. And at a time when the seams of the “vital botched job” have become particularly visible (inequalities, precariousness, the difficulty of separating one’s own identity from work, abuses of power…) it makes more sense than ever to appeal to the radical nature of affection, social justice, care or solidarity: to appeal to the commons.
In that sense, Belén Gopegui’s writing in general -and Existiríamos el mar in particular- works as a constant search for that crack in everything through which, as Leonard Cohen sang, the light enters.
I.N.R.
This article has been written by fourteen hands between Antonio Pineda, Lucía Mos, Sara Morillo, Selene García Torreiro, Isabel Nieto, Elena Francés and Alberto del Castillo.