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Madrid is authentic, boisterous, nocturnal, genuine, tolerant.

But mysterious, dark, and spooky?

After reading the

Magic Madrid Guide

we could say that too.

This book published in 1998 and expanded, revised and republished now by Ediciones Luciérnaga (16.95 euros) shows us a different capital, full of

myths, legends and supernatural stories.

"Madrid has a magical heritage that has nothing to envy that of other cities", confesses the Madrid journalist and writer

Clara Tahoces

, author of the guide.

This graduate in Graphopsychology and Graphological Specialties, whose face may be familiar since she collaborates in the television program

Cuarto Milenio

by

Iker Jiménez,

has compiled 18 places in the center of Madrid and another 10 scattered throughout the region, with the same common thread: ghosts , crimes of passion, black legends and all sorts of strange phenomena.

The writer Clara Tahoces, author of the 'Guía del Madrid Mágico'.

Like the bones hidden behind the tiles of a subway station.

Of

Tirso de Molina,

to be exact.

When the excavations for the construction of this central station on Line 1 began in the early 1920s, the workers came across a large number of bones.

They came from the cemetery of the

old convent of La Merced,

demolished in 1840. And there they are, hidden behind some tiles that many Madrilenians will not have noticed as they pass through the platforms.

The places and itineraries proposed by Tahoces are aimed "at the curious, the restless, those who are not satisfied with appearances and who want to go further and learn new things," he says.

«Mystery has been with me since I was a child.

I am fascinated by everything that is beyond the norm.

Being from Madrid, I was interested in everything that had to do with the enigmas of this city and it turns out that it is full of very curious myths and legends.

Hence my interest in investigating these issues.

MYSTERY BUT SAFE ROUTES

The routes that it proposes can be approached despite the current restrictions of the covid-19, since most are

outdoors

, "it is not necessary to enter the buildings to discover the symbols that their facades hide."

As a sample: the

house of the Seven Chimneys

(current Central Archive of Culture of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports), a cursed building on whose roof it is said that the ghost of a young woman who died of lovesickness in the 16th century walks. ;

the

street Barbieri,

scene of a crime of

passion with severed head including;

number 6 of

Lope de Vega street,

where one of the first clairvoyant -and clandestine- cabinets of the capital was, run by Blessed Clara, an expert in amorous drinking who as soon as she attended astray women as to members of the court of Charles IV ...

The

Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum,

built on an old homeless shelter and later hospital (San Carlos, from 1590),

is also not spared from the patina of mystery

, where after its inauguration as a museum, paranormal phenomena began to be recorded ( voices, banging in basements, and elevators working by themselves);

and possibly the best-known ghost story in Madrid, that of

Raimundita

in the

Palacio de Linares

(now Casa de América), where today "new data and testimonies claim to have disturbing experiences inside the building."

Tiles behind which the bones of the old convent of La Merced rest.

And although Tahoces shows a weakness for the Temple of Debod and the parish of San José, at the confluence of Calle de Alcalá and Gran Vía, he confesses that his favorite magical corner does not appear in the book.

“I deliberately omitted it with the intention of publishing something monographic about it.

It is the

El Capricho park,

in Alameda de Osuna.

I have been slow to do it, but finally I have published a novel that collects all the magic of this place called

The Garden of the Witches

(Ediciones B) ».

And the Madrid of today?

Will you forge new legends?

«Madrid is a living city, which is constantly growing.

And, therefore, where new enigmas are being configured, perhaps not as old as the ones we find in the old town, but which also have their crumb, ”he concludes.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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