The last two days have been a bookshop walk. We decided that it was a good way to discover unseen parts of Madrid as well as seeing what books were on offer. I was also looking for poetry works and maybe a chair and a libreria cafe. I found a sight called ‘Naked Madrid’ and it had a list of bookshops that celebrated poetry.

We left our home in Sabatini gardens, passed the palace and the opera house, to reach our first small hidden away shop, where they held poetry readings but not in my time frame. As I looked about, Garcia Lorca looked down at me from the third shelf and wanted to share some of his wonderful poetry with me. So I sat with Spain’s greatest poet (to many) and read his poetry until my meeting time with Corrie.

Our second bookshop took us down the Gran Via past some grand old buildings, but it was closed for it was an evening performance area for those literary types. A short distance through the narrow backstreets and we were at our third, ‘a closed for good libreria’. The huge cathedral directed us to the next one but it only wanted us to come on weekends.

We ran overtime so we made plans for the next day, just two more and fortunate for us we were discovering new places in Madrid, because the bookshops weren’t cooperating. So now down another part of the Gran Via where Corrie lived for some years and our first huge libreria. I read some of Shakespeares 150 sonnets, had a read of another Lorca book and left the bookshop. As we walked we came across a poetry jam session where people were spilling on to the street – it was our first bookshop, so we paused and listened to some verses.

On the way we revisited, and took photos of, an old friend. It was in the shape of a four storey block of old units, with each unit having a different cartoon character on its facade. The story goes, according to one resident we spoke to, that a retired cartoonist for a Madrid paper was looking for something to do. He happened to be a friend of a princess who owned the block and asked her if he could dress it with cartoons -she obviously said yes.

We end our journey with a quick sonnet – thanks for coming with us. 

A walk across the memories so vast

That Portugal still loves so much to cherish,

The sea was theirs, a rich and glorious past

That sunk, but not their faith, it did not perish.

Saudade is the word in Portuguese

Expressing sadness of some time ago,

But melancholy passes like the breeze

So maybe yet there’ll be another show.

Duende is the word that Spain adores 

In short it means to reach a special place,

It’s raw, it’s real, it’s covered in applause

Of unspent love, of that there’ll be no trace,

To ‘know’ these words – it can be recent fashion

To ‘be’ these words – requires enormous passion.