Diario de Madrid: Gente Maja: Junio 2005

Hot North African winds blew through Madrid this weekend, as workers celebrated the beginning of their holidays. Streets overflowed with a sweaty, noisy, excited human stream. The bustling traffic of bodies passing through dry heat swelled irregularly in knots, as friends met at metro stations, lovers pressed each other into doorways and tourists stood to stare at the street entertainers. Each road had its climax point, from Fuencarral, where a burgeoning crowd spilled out to meet the flow from Gran Via, all the way down to Plaza Mayor, as groups sat and drank in the night, chatting, all splayed out on the cobble stones. Their voices reached up past the muralled walls into the clear deep ocean of dark blue sky.