“Madrid is a place where wounds are healed”

Even in a book or at close range, Alfonso J. Ucia decorative literature. He is a greedy walker who takes life into his mouth like Bovary takes arsenic into his mouth. “I’m not a typical novelist. I don’t know how to create a story from scratch. I have to touch the place, see it, read it. That becomes the material for my prose. Every memory is made for something: from the universality of small things like a concert, a walk, the weather, the smell of tapa, a tortilla, to write it, to tell it, to connect with people. After all, it is those small things that make us feel alive in the text.

galileo room

The tour began in a concert hall, where artist Carlos Chaouen sang live without any effort. “Many important episodes fit within 1,000 meters of four blocks in Madrid,” says Ucia, cigarette in hand. “Madrid is the stage of our history.” He takes one last puff and departs. “In all my novels, Madrid is a fundamental character. Whether it’s Antonio Vega in Vatio, it’s Madrid. Maquis in Cuento del Norte. It also appears in “Suicide Bridge” and “Boroka”. “This is a place where wounds heal,” he explained as he walked up the stairs to a dark room covered in stickers. A neon sign flashes at the end of the hallway. “There’s a lot of nonsense.” It is written in pink.

“I was very happy here in Galileo Galilei’s original dressing room. It was a dream factory. Madrid is the railway station where everyone arrives for 200 years. Before they came from Palencia. Now they come from Colombia, Mexico and the United States. “We are all new residents of Madrid and we want to show what we’re doing.” As he descends the stairs, he pauses and smiles. “I saw Antonio Vega naked singing ‘Giant Fight’ here. Moments like this stay with you forever. That’s why this place is so special.”

Menéndez Pelayo and Ibiza

In the pages of “Under Heaven,” Ushia stitches images together to create seams of beauty. “Madrid is a city where you come to succeed or fail, but always try. Its tradition is huge: flamenco, bullfighting, literature. But Madrid is a villain. It doesn’t let you succeed easily. The competition is fierce. There are far more failures than successes, but those failures create something very poetic,” he says, sitting next to the fridge in Galileo’s room, but there are no more beers in there. You need to go to a bar and have a beer before you take a taxi to Retiro.

“Madrid is the stage for successful artists: photographers, painters, writers. You may be a shrimp on an island who could not have eaten the world if you had not set foot in Madrid. Vargas Llosa started his work here… This is a street city, respecting the freedom of others. Here no one knows where you are from. We don’t ask where you came, but rather where you want to go. Moreover, Usía added: “We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years since the coffee threshold. And since long ago, Gardos, Barroja… all the writers whose home was Madrid. Whether Barroja came from the north or from Gipuzkoa. Perez Gardos They came from the islands, from Tenerife, from the Canary Islands. They came here to make this city the stage of their lives.

After taking the last sip, we set off towards the crosswalk and now we are in a taxi heading in the next direction. Menéndez Pelayo and Ibiza. Ideas of roots, belonging, and places of passage take over the conversation. According to Usía himself, he is a native of Madrid, was born in this city, and is a descendant of Muñoz Seca of Puerto de Santa María, Usía of San Sebastián and Jodio, Hornedo of Santander and Comillas, and Mugillo of Navarra. “I have 25% southern and 75% northern influences, which corresponds to 100% Madrid DNA.”

panelos madrid

The book consists of three blocks. “The Lost City” contains a chronicle that focuses on traditional bars, the disappearing everyday life, and the spaces of old Madrid. “Cities to Debut”, dedicated to recent changes such as new businesses, migration, tourist apartments, rooftops, urban transformation, etc., and “Cities of a Thousand Cities”, which brings together texts on specific regions such as Salesas, Vallecas, Retiro, Tetouan, Villaverde, and Little Caracas. A prologue by Andrés Calamaro and an epilogue by José F. Pelaez tie together a unique look that cannot be summarized in this conversation, but can be ended with a nice beer and a few cigarettes between streets.

After leaving home, Agustín de Foxa and the place “El Pirlo” In front of a plaque proving that Leopoldo Panelo and his family passed through that portal. Alfonso J. Ucia He raises his hand: “This was Michi’s territory. His maxim, which I shared with my father and which he taught me since I was a child, is that in life you can be anything but a nuisance.” Ucia laughed and started walking towards Narváez Street. «This is Madrid from Panelos: I’m Michi, an unemployed writer. He lived by reading books, smoking cigarettes, and walking around Retiro. For him, writing was a pretense, and in a sense he was right. After-dinner literature, ephemeral literature, literature spoken through a glass. On the way downhill to 68 Calle Narváez, Alfonso J. Ucia promises to take me to the best salad in the entire city. Standing at Rafa’s bar, Alfonso J. Ucia serves food from a platter to two other plates. The smallest portion is reserved and will wait until that portion is calculated. “As I said earlier, “You can’t eat anything like this anywhere else.” This is Ussia, the graceful and smiling Balzac, the noble writer and chronicler par excellence who lets the novelist in him go for a walk, tied around his neck.