BLACKATLAS.COM – MADRID

Before landing in Madrid my head was filled with visions of bullfights, flamenco and the writer Ernest Hemingway and, to a great degree, the city did not disappoint. Plaza del Toros, Madrid’s massive bullfighting ring, is a beautiful structure that host battles between man and bull Sundays from March to October. Passionate flamenco performances can be seen nightly at Corral De La Moreria. And there are plaques to places Hemingway ate and drank all over town.

However what was really surprising about Madrid was how many products of the African Diaspora were walking its streets. On mid-day on Gran Via (which is the kind of Madrid’s Broadway) I ran into more people of color than I’d see at Noon on San Francisco’s Market Street. On my first day in town I chatted with a black British woman who was studying Spanish at a local university, a brother from Senegal who spoke mostly French and Spanish, and exchanged smiles with several black folk who spoke only Spanish.

While cities like London and Paris have reputations for having multi-cultural populations, Madrid is an international city that has a growing population of African and Caribbean peoples.  There are several areas of the city where these new Spaniards have settled, most of them in South Madrid. But one of the most vibrant and diverse areas of Madrid is in the city’s center.

Lavapies is anchored by Tiruso de Molina Plaza, a spot where on any given afternoon you’ll see anyway from twenty to forty African men maxin’ and relaxin’. It was once a bastion of white working class Spaniards, but has been transformed in a Spanish version of New York’s famous lower east side, where generations of European immigrants became American. Most visible on the streets of Lavapies were African, most of whom spoke only French and/or Spanish. Through an interpreter I chatted with two burly six foot plus brothers from Senegal who lived in Lavapies and did security at some of the local African nightspots. They said Spain, which is just across the Mediterranean, had become a prime destination for Africans looking for work and people would take great risk to support their families. While they were reluctant to give too much personal info, they said the Spanish had been decent with them, though I could tell they were a little leery of being too frank with me.

Scores of stores in Lavapies sold food and products aimed at its diverse population. One store sold African and Pakistani food. Another spot advertised that it sold African-Chinese-Caribbean-Latino products, a medley of food and items from a dizzying array of places. Even back in the melting pot of New York, I’ve never seen stores that served as wide a variety of specific ethnic groups and immigrants as in Lavapies. Whatever you think Europe is, the truth is the place is becoming more multi-cultural and definitely blacker.

But, as Sonia’s, a black beauty shop on El Valverde, just off Gran Via, made clear this new European black world will have its particular flavor. In the window were ads for some of the same hairstyles and products you’d fine in Harlem or South Central. Sonia, in her 40, was from Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony located in central Africa. Of the three chairs in her shop on a hot summer afternoon two were occupied by white Spanish women who were getting their hair braided in anticipation of getting hair weaves.

Coco, a 30ish Nigerian from that nation’s Ebo tribe, gave me some insight on Sonia’s and the place of African’s in Spain once I agreed to get a hair cut. He’d been living in Madrid for six years, making his living cutting men and women’s hair, as well as white as well as blacks, skills he refined in order to survive in Madrid. He’d once lived in the area near Sonia’s but now resided in South Madrid, where there were more Africans. While there were enough people of color in Madrid for him to make a living, by doing white hair he was able to make more money and have a small degree of social mobility by meeting Spanish natives.

We got into a long discussion about African-Americans and their relationship to Africa. Coco, who spoke three languages (Ebo, Spanish, English) found it amazing that black folk from the U.S. were not, a the very least, b-lingual since folks from any African nation who made it to Europe could usually converse in two to three tongues.

I’m a well-read college educated American. Coco was from a small village in West Africa. Yet because my barber was tri-lingual he had more social mobility in Europe, Africa and around the globe. Americans, black and white, have a rep for being amongst travelers and the root of a lot of that reputation is our unwillingness/inability to speak more than English. We can always say, “I’m sure most of them speak English.” But a lot of them don’t. A lot of folks speak Spanish. So both as a gesture of good will and a practical manner we American travelers are well advised to step up our language game before we leave the country.

After getting a fine hair cut from Coco and seeing his next customer, a white businessman in a suit & tie arrive, I wandered around Madrid doing the tourist thing, visiting the historic Plaza Mayor and its nearby more garish cousin Puerto Del Sol. But the real touristy highlights of my Madrid visit brought me back to the power of African-American culture. In a nod to hip hop there were graffiti tags all over town – along roadsides and on storefront grates. In Puerto del Sol, a busy square trafficked by shoppers by day and hookers by night; I saw a large window display celebrating “the Emperor de Pop.” Michael Jackson, in all his glory, was repped by a large photo and copies of his many multi-platinum CDs.  From Gary, Indiana to Madrid, in death Michael remains a global star.

Strangely Michael came to mind watching an intense flamenco show at Corral De La Moreria. As I observed male dancer Adrian Sanchez sweat and strut through a stomping, rollicking dance performance I was stunned at how many elements, from Michael’s use of his hands over his head to create drama to the elegance of the black suits & white shirts he often choose, had a flamenco aspect to them. Go back to Michael’s “Liberian Girl” video (which featured Naomi Campbell) and you'll see echoes of Spanish style. The final, funniest link was when Sanchez did a flamenco moonwalk during his show. This is why Michael Jackson was such an international force – his ability to weave in threads from different cultures and make them his. Moreover this exchange was a two way street, where Michael himself influenced Spanish performers with his style. Which is why travel can be so richly rewarding. We may all speak different languages but you’ll find dance and music are the easiest ways communicate.

BA Short Stuff: In traveling in Spain it was remarkable to see how relaxed the security experience was. You could keep your shoes on coming in and out of the country. Customs at Madrid weren’t particular about how paperwork, letting one of the folks traveling me with enter the country without filling out the travel card given out on the plane, something that would never happen in the States. The Customs officers even smiled and told jokes… Central Madrid is so full of Starbucks you never have to change your coffee habits there… Madrid’s T4 airport terminal is one of the most beautiful and architecturally audacious in the world. If you have a long layover there it’s worth walking around… Taxis are plentiful in Madrid and very clean… If you like espadrilles there’s a quaint little store off Plaza Mayor called Alaparagateria that has a nice selection… To prepare yourself for your trip to Madrid I recommend you check out the films of Pedro Almovodar, who discovered Penelope Cruz and whose work (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, Volver) are valentines to the city.