Subway Madrid – Life From Underground

Advertising for the Madrid Metro is some of the most creative in the world. This television ad is being used currently. Some of the buildings and places you see are instantly recognisable to anyone who knows the city.

Non-Funky New Billboards

Loads of new advertising billboards with large screens have started popping up around the city. They’re rectangular in shape and range in size from 3×2 metres to 12×4m, and there’s a strip version at 4×1m. The authorities have authorised a company called Clear Channel to build 899 of the things in total and run them for ten years, for a price of 160 million euroweenies.

Naturally, the socialists on the council have objected, with the IU claiming they will impede pedestrians and create distractions for drivers. It’s what PJ O’Rourke calls the Liberal Safety Nazi tendency, whereby human beings are regarded as nothing less than incompetent idiots who need to be told how to live by interfering busybodies from the government. Oh my God! It’s a big screen with an ad on it! Shit! I just crashed my car into the monumental fountain in the middle of the fucking road!

The PSOE are on stronger grounds with their objections citing various procedural problems with authorisation. Apparently, approval for this project was whipped through very quickly and certain executives at Clear Channel have strong connections with the ruling party of the Madrid council (the Partido Popular). Nonetheless, the public are generally in favour, with the biggest complaint being that the screens are old fashioned. With the sort of technology available these days they could have at least gone digital.

The billboards have been dubbed pantallazos, which sort of translates as ‘big screens’. A pantalla is a screen, a pantallazo a bigger version, get it? The Spanish add ‘azo’ at the end of nouns to make things ‘bigger’ or ‘greater’, e.g. mi coche = my car – mi cochazo = my super great car with spoilers and go faster stripes. ¡Gol! = Goal! – ¡Golazo! = Stevie G thirty-yard screamer into top corner.

Madrid – 10th Best City In The World To Live In

According to Monocle Magazine, Madrid is the tenth best city in the world for quality of life. Munich came first, followed by Copenhagen, Zurich, Vienna, Helsinki and Stockholm (in order). Most importantly of all, however, was the news that we beat Barcelona, which came in 30th. Yes! The survey noted that Madrid was internationally competitive in the cultural fields of dance, theatre and music events and it also made special mention of the good (and cheap) public transport and restaurants and the fact that the city is truly open 24 hours – which is so true.

Soy una Osa

The city of Madrid’s emblem is ‘El Oso y el Madroño’ (The Bear and the Strawberry tree). The most famous representation of it is a statue in Puerta de Sol, pictured. Today, a group of ‘activists’ were in the plaza distributing flyers and scratch cards contending that ‘el oso’ is, in fact ‘una osa’ – i.e. it’s a female bear. Television cameras were out to record the fun and did a series of vox-pops about what the locals thought about this assault on their treasured symbol. Probably the best response recorded by TV Cuatro was a very wry fifty’ish bloke who, when asked: “So, do you think it’s an Osa, not an Oso?”, replied, “Why, of course it’s a female. If not, where’s its willy?” There are a number of theories as to how Madrid got a bear and a tree as its city emblem. For a selection of the best answers we recommend this page on Yahoo! Spain .

Guía de Distritos

¡Hola! ¿Qué Tal?. Madrid-Uno is gradually getting to grips with the geography of the city, which is uphill, which is down, East and West, North and South etc. The city council dropped some informational litter through the post-box which has a nice simple map which is reproduced below. Madrid-Uno lives in Salamanca district (Zone 4).