6 TR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 19, 2011
By DAVID FARLEY
IN Madrid’s Legazpi neighborhood,a vast complex of early-20th-centu-ry buildings of ornate stone andbrick sits near the banks of theManzanares River. For most of the
20th century, the Matadero Madrid, asthe compound is known, was the city’smain slaughterhouse; its robust stenchlingered far beyond the high stone wallssurrounding it and deep into the work-ing-class neighborhood nearby.
In the late 1930s, though, that odordidn’t deter a young bullfighting-ob-sessed American writer living in thecity from frequenting the slaughter-house.
“This is where the old women comeearly in the morning to drink the sup-posedly nutritious blood of the freshlykilled cattle,” he later told A. E. Hotchn-er, his biographer. “Many a morning I’dget up at dawn and come down here towatch the novilleros, and sometimeseven the matadors themselves, comingin to practice killing, and there would bethe old women standing in line for theblood.”
These days, you won’t find the mata-dors or the old women: the Mataderohas been converted into a dynamic newart center. I had just taken in an exhibi-tion of Latin American designers — butI wasn’t really there for the art.
I was instead following the tracks ofthat American writer, Ernest Heming-way. Hemingway is associated with ahandful of places around the planet —most notably Paris, Pamplona, Havana,Key West and Ketchum, Idaho, wherehe took his own life in July 1961. Butnone may have held a warmer spot inhis heart than Madrid, which he called“the most Spanish of all cities,” re-ferring to its diverse population fromevery region of the country. He also ti-tled a short story based in Madrid “TheCapital of the World.”
“Don Ernesto,” as he was known tothe Spanish, spent enough time in Ma-drid — he was there for chunks of thelate 1920s, late 1930s, and parts of the1950s, with his last visit in 1960 — thathe left a distinct, mostly booze-stainedtrail. With the exception of the re-vamped Matadero, the modern versionof Hemingway’s Madrid is an old-schoolitinerary of bars, bullfighting arenasand restaurants. So in advance of the50th anniversary of his death, I set outto experience all that drew Hemingway
back again and again to the city.After starting my tour at the Matad-
ero, I met up with my wife, Jessie Sholl,in front of our hotel, the Tryp Gran Via,one of the spots Hemingway stayed (thesecond-floor breakfast room, named forthe writer, displays photos of him in var-ious acts of masculinity like firing a gunor pulling in a huge fish from a boat. ).
From there we headed down the GranVia, a wide boulevard Hemingway de-scribed as Madrid’s answer to Broad-way and Fifth Avenue combined, pass-ing by Museo Chicote, a cocktail bar hefrequented in the 1930s, when it waspopular with international journalists.We then zigzagged through the streetsaround Puerta del Sol, many recentlymade pedestrians-only, crossing nar-row Calle Victoria, where Hemingwayoften purchased scalped bullfightingtickets. We walked through leafy PlazaSanta Ana, home to Cerveceria Alema-na, a 1904 beer hall that was such a fa-vorite of Hemingway’s that he had hisown table ( just to the right of the en-trance, the only marble-topped tableoverlooking a window).
A couple of twists and turns later, wereached Calle de Echegaray, its cobble-stones shining from a morning rain, andentered La Venencia, an old bar wheremen in flat caps and tweed jacketssipped sherry from tall, narrow glassesand barkeeps wrote their tabs in chalkon the bar.
We sat down at a table toward theback of the room with Stephen Drake-Jones, who has lived in Madrid for 35years. “Welcome to the civil war,” saidthe 61-year-old former University ofMadrid history professor, referring tothe three-year period, 1936 to 1939, thatpitted left-leaning Republicans againstthe Fascists. Mr. Drake-Jones runs atour company called The Wellington So-ciety of Madrid. A native of Leeds, Eng-land, Mr. Drake-Jones gives a popularHemingway-themed tour and has an en-cyclopedic knowledge of the writer’stime in Madrid.
As he pushed glasses of crisp man-zanilla sherry toward us, Mr. Drake-Jones explained that La Venencia was— and, in some ways, still is — a hauntfor Republican sympathizers. “Duringthe civil war,” he said, “this bar was fre-quented by Republican soldiers. Hem-ingway would come here a lot to getnews from the front” — in the late 1930s,he was reporting on the war for theNorth American Newspaper Alliance —which would later inform “For Whomthe Bell Tolls,” his novel about the war.
“This place hasn’t changed in 70years,” he added. “It’s like walking rightinto Hemingway.”
He pointed to an old sign on the walland translated: “In the interest of hy-giene, don’t spit on the floor.” This was,he said, only the first rule of La Venen-cia. The second rule — no taking of pho-tos — prevented Republican visitorsfrom being incriminated by possibleFascist spies during the war. The third
rule: Absolutely no tipping. “The Re-publican loyalists considered them-selves all workers — they were all thesame — so there was no point in tip-ping,” Mr. Drake-Jones said.
Just then his eyes squinted and nar-
rowed in on Jessie, who was taking a sipof sherry. “Stop!” he cried. There was afourth rule he hadn’t gotten to yet. “Ifthis were during the civil war, you’d bearrested right now,” he said, his eyessurveying the room to see if anyone was
watching. Jessie put her glass down.“You just gave yourself away as some-one who wouldn’t have belonged here.But if you would have held your glasslike this” — he picked up his glass bythe stem — “the regulars wouldn’t take
alarm. Otherwise, they would havethought you were a foreign spy.”
Schooled in correct sipping techniqueand fortified by the sherry, I bid adios toMr. Drake-Jones (and Jessie, who wentto nap back at the hotel) and headed toLas Ventas arena, one of the most pres-tigious bullfighting rings in the world. Ijoined a guided group tour. The tours,given daily from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.,in both English and Spanish, takeguests both into the seats (Hemingwayliked sitting in Section 9, Mr. Drake-Jones had told me earlier) and onto thesand in the middle of the stadium,where brave matadors stare down 500-pound horned beasts in front of 24,000fans. When the tour finished, I asked theguide, Sean Marcos, 24, if he was a bull-fighting aficionado.
“No, not really,” he said. “The peopleof my generation don’t like bullfighting.It’s mostly for older people.”
When I asked if he thought that didn’tbode well for the future of bullfighting inSpain, he shrugged and said, “Whoknows? Maybe when we’re older we’llbecome interested.”
Don Ernesto would most likely havebeen crushed that his beloved bullfight-ing was losing interest with successivegenerations. But he’d be happy to knowthat interest in his other Madrid love isfar from waning: He was also a lover ofthe Prado, home to one of the world’sgreat art collections.
The analogy he drew to viewing art atthe museum was pure Hemingway:“The tourist should be introduced to anattractive woman quite unclothed withno draperies, no concealments and noconversation and only the plainest ofbeds.”
The Prado was one of the main rea-sons he sometimes chose to stay at thePalace Hotel (now the Westin PalaceHotel), located across the street fromthe museum. Hemingway would oftenbegin his evenings with a martini or twoat the stuffy bar inside the hotel, whichalso appears toward the end of his 1926novel, “The Sun Also Rises.”
Like Jake and Brett, the novel’s pro-tagonists, my wife and I cozied up to thebar and ordered our own round of mar-tinis (at 17.20 euros, about $, each, itwasn’t easy pretending we were in the1920s). When asked for a dining sugges-tion, the bartender pointed up towardPlaza Santa Ana and said the streetswere crammed with restaurants. I had adifferent spot in mind, though: El Sobri-no de Botín, Jake and Brett’s next stopin the final scenes of the novel.
Botín, open since 1725 on a tiny streetbehind Plaza Mayor, claims to be theoldest restaurant in the world. Jake andBrett turned up here — like Hemingwayhimself often did — to dine on the housespecialty, roasted suckling pig, anddrink several bottles of Rioja Alta. Botínisn’t above playing up the association:the front window displays an image ofthe writer and a quote from the “SunAlso Rises” that mentions the restau-rant. (Until recently, the owners of anearby restaurant, presumably tryingto differentiate themselves from Botín,hung a large sign above its door read-ing: “HEMINGWAY NEVER ATEHERE.”)
Jessie and I asked for a table upstairs,the place where Hemingway put Jakeand Brett and where he preferred sit-ting as well. And like our fictional coun-terparts, we dined on juicy roast suck-ling pig, though we stopped at just onebottle of Rioja. Afterward, I introducedmyself to Antonio and Carlos Gonzales,the third generation of their family toown Botín. The brothers hadn’t beenborn when Hemingway was a regularguest at their restaurant, but they’veheard plenty of stories.
“Don Ernesto once wanted to makepaella,” Carlos said. “And so our grand-father allowed him to go into the kitchento make it.”
Was it any good? “Apparently not,” he said, laughing.
“It was the last time they let him cookanything.”
Gonzales’s grandfather, however, didgive Hemingway the privilege of mak-ing his own martinis. “He would gethere early in the day and write upstairsuntil his friends showed up for lunch,”Antonio said.
We bade the brothers Gonzales fare-well and, like Jake and Brett in the lastscene of “The Sun Also Rises” — andmost certainly the man whose trail I’dbeen following the last four days — wehailed a cab and drove into the warmMadrid night. Æ
F O O T S T E P S
Blood, Sand, Sherry: Hemingway’s Madrid
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES RAJOTTE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
FROM TOP Hemingway liked Section 9 at Las Ventas bullring; taking refreshments at Las Ventas before the bull-fights; Jose Gonzales, a proprietors of the restaurant El Sobrino de Botín; the Matadero Madrid, a slaughterhouse inHemingway’s day, is now an art center.
In the ‘Capital of the
World’: roasted pig,
bullfights and bars.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
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