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MADRID, Spain – Since we arrived from the airport by metro, we entered Madrid from below ground. We did not see the arid suburbs or the modern parts of the city, but popped up – Alice in Wonderland-like – in a fairy tale world of crooked streets and an endless collection of establishments dedicated to the raising of glasses, to carousing, to bonhomie.
In a strange city, it can be hard to break through all the surfaces meant to keep you at bay. But if the city pulses as if you were standing on the back of a sleeping beast; if behind each shuttered window you sense a ruby-red secret; if you fear you will die of hyper-ventilated frustration if you do not penetrate that secret world, well, in that case it is essential you have someone to show you the way.
In our case, we were blessed by the Gods as they sent one of their own to show us around. Our guide was Mavi Diaz: ex-Viuda e hijas de Roque Enroll, leader of Mavi Diaz & Las Folkies, record producer, survivor, chef, avid liver of life, frenetic bringer-together of disparate strands. We dropped our bags at her place and consigned ourselves to her care.
Our first stop was El Camoatí, a picturesque bar owned by an Argentine and which was the obvious gathering place for fellow expats wanting to scream themselves hoarse rooting for Argentina in their 3-1 World Cup win over Mexico.
Next, we visited Artebar, a peña for Argentines in Madrid who love making music together and dancing, but the warm weather made the brick-arched underground alcoves too stuffy and we soon left — though not before meeting a chocolate-colored Adonis from Mar del Plata who was impeccably polite and was on his way to dance ballet with the Bolshoi.
Madrid is a city where turning in early means going home at 2am. We had no intention of committing such a sacrilege so we walked the streets toward a place where many Madrid nights end: La Recova, a venerable tango redoubt, whose owner, El Tano, has a reputation as illustrious as his police report is long.
When we arrived, sometime after midnight, only a couple of tables were occupied and I concluded – wrongly – that we had missed the action. But as we lingered in conversation and sampled a sweet Basque liqueur served very cold called Patxaran, people wandered in: some flamenco dancers relaxing after a show, the bartender from the bar where we had watched the football match, other people I had seen at other joints. Madrid, I was discovering, is just one big party that migrates from place to place.
Eventually, María and Mavi were coaxed to the stage, their voices mingling, playing with and seducing each other. María and I played several duets of guitar and harmonica. At 3am sharp El Tano hurried out to pull down the steel shutters to comply with city law – he didn’t want to be shut down yet again. He used to stay open until 6am but the authorities in their great wisdom no longer permitted that. But the party continued behind closed doors and when we eventually wandered home in the company of our new friends the actor and the playwright (who sang show tunes that echoed down the narrow passages around us), the sky was a deep, luminous blue that seemed to announce the dawn but which Mavi said was just the way the Madrid sky always was when the night has been good to you.
But this tale is not about Madrid. It is about an indomitable force of nature with a weakness for studded punk bracelets who lives life on four high-speed lanes all at once and has a heart as big as they come. It is about Mavi and the night she cracked open the cobblestoned mysteries of Madrid for us and welcomed us in.
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