A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S WAKING DREAM
A Summer’s night even before Spring could burst upon the city
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by Jack Wright
Photos taken 18 March 2024 by Chris Collins
Electronic clock downtown Madrid records a summery 19ºC at 22.27 hours
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It’s a short jog of the clock to the midnight hour. There’s a slight breeze.
It’s summer night at its best. And yet it’s only the 18th of March, the eve of the eve of Spring.
But who cares about the official calendar!
Downtown Madrid is alive with strollers and diners. It’s never too late to dine in the nation’s capital. Diners won’t be rushed. Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice President of Spain’s central government (Second Deputy Prime Minister) and concurrently Minister of Labor, says it’s bad for hostelry employees’ mental health to be working past 10:00 PM and should be duly compensated. But that’s another story.
Others hie off to the nearby park to join up with friends.
Adopt the lifestyle. Bless the summer weather. It may come and go until Summer elbows out Spring once and for all. Which it does quite early, you can depend on that.
Madrid has a quasi-pathological penchant for acting as though the sun (or, in this case, the moon) is always up there shining on folks whatever the weather. As though Summer has arrived already even when Spring isn’t even there yet.
That’s the way of the Madrileños, autochthonous or transplanted from foreign soil!
