{"id":10268,"date":"2015-12-22T17:56:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T16:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/?p=10268"},"modified":"2016-09-15T11:09:38","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T09:09:38","slug":"two-hours-in-madrid-at-the-san-miguel-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/two-hours-in-madrid-at-the-san-miguel-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Two hours in Madrid at the San Miguel market"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mercado\"<\/a>\u201cMe encantan las gambas a la plancha\u2026<\/em>\u201d, she was tweeting like a swallow while withdrawing\u00a0 its plate. I was distant and didn’t know why I was there. Where exactly? “Mercado de San Miguel\u201d was the name. I arrived there by chance, just following a dream. ( Gi.Co.)<\/p>\n

Let’s start in order. I came upon Madrid on a spring day: the sun was high, there was a sweet breeze, and in my heart I had the hostile desire to visit Vel\u00e0zquez, the great Baroque portrait painter.<\/p>\n

I didn’t queue to get inside the Prado museum. Quick I dove into those rooms, to find again the peace of tradition. I was longing to see those clowns and dwarfs: Pablo de Valladolid, or the Taliban and disarming eyes of the Don Cristobal de Casta\u00f1eda y Pern\u00eda portrait, named the Barbarossa. Or how to hold a proud paintbrush and together the unbearable upset that Infanta Margarita expresses in the great masterpiece \u201cLas meninas\u201d?<\/p>\n

Y\"mercado4\"<\/a>es, tradition can upset. Stop, I decide to go out. While thinking I walk along the Paseo of El Prado. Insolent enough I get into the CaixaForum, a post-modern art gallery, free just like all modern things which are vile and miserable. What I find is an unexpected exhibition: shots of a century by Jacques Henri Lartigue, a master of photography, a genius of the fleeting moments.<\/p>\n

Looking that world that does not change, but that is not anachronistic, pierce my heart and catch the sight of a mysterious woman: she has a nice hat, a pale and lightweight dress. She looks at those pictures with existential melancholy, which I am so in love with. \"mercado2\"<\/a>Does she know about me? No, at all; cold, unapprochable and for this reason even more desirable. I will call her Florette, like the young wife of my photographer Cupid. By this time subjugated, I only take care of her. Suddenly, she decides to go out. She crosses the big street, with her long naked legs. I follow her like a thief. She gets into the Royal Botanic garden and stops enchanted by a meadow of Red Matador tulips, straight like Don Quixote’s mills.<\/p>\n

I have just read the label of a Chinese palm, which is adorable like my mysterious lady: trachycarpus fortunei. I remember the words of the apocryphal Gospel of the kind of Matthew: “I would love, if it would be possible, to collect the fruits of this palm”. My lurin woman attracts me like a moth in the heart of the ancient Madrid.<\/p>\n

\"mercado5\"<\/a>She turns towards a square and stops in front of a building made of wrought iron and glass, a monument of modernism and new ideas of almost a century ago, reminiscence of the Les Halles market in Paris.<\/p>\n

There is a sign, Mercado de San Miguel, and the bottom floor has a large window full of fruits, vegetables, fish, bread. A place to get together and walk, first of all. Here it looks like you can go shopping every day and taste something in the several shops and store houses.<\/p>\n

\"mercado3\"<\/a>Florette gets inside, among the crowd that let her pass through, caressed by a golden light, that crosses the high aisles. She stops at a desk and tastes some olive skewers and boquerones en vinagre, fresh anchovies marinaded in white vinegar.<\/p>\n

Standing, in front of another \u201cbodega\u201d, she whispers something, she drinks a cold Manzanilla on tap, a sherry with something a bit salty that is irresistible. Chased by my look, has the ritual of tapas: sips and smiles. The party carries on, Florette takes off her hat and loose her brown hair. Then, it looks like she claims something to a huge and smiling chef, who disappears behind a desk of fresh fish. Cooking straight away, he brings Florette a dish of grilled prawns, hot and seasoned with salt and some parsley. \u201cMe encantan las gambas a la plancha \u2026\u201d, were her words, while she turned and looked at me smiling, with her dark eyes. She really stared at me. And I thought about what Ernest Hemingway wrote once during a hot Summer in 1929, here in Madrid: \u201cThere isn’t any cure for anything in life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Giorgio Contino<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mercado de San Miguel<\/p>\n

Plaza Oriente, 3 – 28013 Madrid, Spagna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMe encantan las gambas a la plancha\u2026\u201d, she was tweeting like a swallow while withdrawing\u00a0 its plate. I was distant and didn’t know why I was there. Where exactly? “Mercado de San Miguel\u201d was the name. I arrived there by chance, just following a dream. ( Gi.Co.) Let’s start in order. I came upon Madrid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":10589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7052,8493],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/mercado3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10594,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268\/revisions\/10594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sceltedigusto.it\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}