Madrid, confined and jaded: "Politicians are the house of Tócame Roque"

• Coronavirus: Pedro Sánchez decrees the state of alarm in Madrid and Isabel Díaz Ayuso denounces that he refuses to negotiate

• Direct Last minute on the coronavirus

A dance girl comes down the street of Cuchilleros.

Her weightless duck gait betrays her.

It is 6:50 pm on Friday afternoon of the brawl and the state of alarm that closed the cage of Madrid.

The spring temperature accompanies.

There is a seasonal imbalance in the climate that opens a space-time hole through which girls of first communion pass.

October seems like May, when there was at least some hope.

It is no longer known in what.

Not in the political race that people

curses.

.

Whether or not the bridge of the National Holiday has been blown up, they all feel like victims, collateral damage, abused objects of "a struggle of egos, let's see who has it longer."

Flor, at her age, without mincing words and jaded, doesn't give a damn that in that contest, the size one, Isabel loses to Pedro: “What a joke this is!” Flor changed mountain hiking for the centennial theater of La Latina.

Accompanied by Marisa and Ono form

in the fullness of the mature woman.

They have a theater voucher from the Pentación group and on Saturday, already set, they will go to another of their rooms to see

.

Today plays something cooler:

.

Rafaella Carrá's cheerful inspiration also calls Sara, Irene and Ana, three twenty-somethings of different scales.

Sara has suspended the trip to her homeland, Badajoz.

Change of plans: «I was going to leave tomorrow [for Saturday].

By bus, of course.

Because by train to Extremadura you already know ... ».

Then, Sara, Irene and Ana will clap with the same intensity as Flor, Marisa and Ono for the first number of the musical.

La Carrá has no age. Outside the theater that belonged to Lina Morgan, the afternoon lengthens.

Clockwise 15 minutes past 20:00.

In front of the Cebada market, on Toledo Street, the La Paloma brewery contains the echo of the voice that was its flag: "Double grilled shrimp!"

A sign announces the ruin in the crab orphan window: "As soon as possible we will open."

Behind him, El Rastro is a cobblestone desert.

Cascorro parades alone.

Beyond, along the route of the terraces, life bustles.

A skinny and wrinkled guy, impeccable in a suit and tie, somewhat Chikilicuatre because of his toupee and long hair, claims the reward for his rumba among the tables of young people who pass on his speech and his music.

The rumba has not started nor the will and his lip does not find friends either.

His partner on the guitar, a plump and shirtless man, with José Feliciano glasses, keeps the instrument.

In the Plaza del Humilladero they repeat the operation.

And they reap the same success.

No water.

That's what they complain about in El Viajero, a Latina classic.

Enter Jorge, a Mexican boy with an air of Leiva jibarizado.

He and his Irish girlfriend go up to the roof, where they have reserved a table.

The state of alarm has screwed them an excursion to Alicante.

"Tomorrow we were traveling," he says without much regret.

.

From the decorated terrace the couple contemplates the burning sunset over the dome of San Francisco el Grande.

That completes the little Rome scene.

"During the week there will be no one," laments Anolkis behind the bar.

Alfredo left.

At 11:00 p.m. they will raise the last of the Philippines.The joy of the outdoor tables is only palpable in the first gambling dens of Cava Baja.

The Pez Tortilla showcase reveals a bustle without distances.

Either there is a lot of family unity or there is a lot of desire to fuck.

.

For the thirty-year-old couple who dine in Lucio at a table surrounded by ghosts and empty chairs, Sánchez has not changed their plans.

They live nearby and they weren't planning to go out on the bridge.

Nor have dinner in the traditional and mythical restaurant: "We decided it half an hour ago."

Deciding to go to Lucio on the go, on a Friday night, and find a table is a milestone, a reflection of the dramatic situation in the center of Madrid.

Javier Blázquez, son of the legendary restaurateur-confined and armored now in Alicante with the severe consequences of the Covid-,

.

It only needs a tear to erase a reservation: «Then the restaurant will be filled, only the ground floor, with reduced capacity, without double shifts as in the past due to the time limits imposed.

Soon only tourists were dining, and there are no tourists. '

The sad face of Teo,

incombustible, is the summary of the ERTE in which the workforce lives, the ERTE that comes and goes, since such is the confusion and legal uncertainty.

The ruin extends through the Cava Baja that grew around some starry eggs.

It's almost 10 p.m. and the street is the early morning on any given Monday.

Not a bridge atmosphere, not even on the weekend.

Julián de Tolosa has the zipper down.

Also El Almedro 13 with all its Sanlúcar chamomile inside.

At number 3 on the same street, a man with a map of La Rioja on his face and a curda like a piano, talks from a stone bench with his friend the street sweeper:

The fleeting lucidity of drunkards.

Regret floods the few open places.

From the balconies hang out-of-date banners against tourist rentals and the AIRBNB as a vindication of the neighbors. Glovers pedal along the Gran Vía like escapes from a platoon that does not pursue them.

There is hardly any traffic on the road, and not even the shadow of God walks on the sidewalks.

Every now and then a National Police patrol car goes by at full blast.

.

It's not hard to imagine him running through the Casa de Campo, like a scene from

.

Paul Newman was caught over and over again.

We are all a little Newman in this prison of futility and confusion.

The great musicals still have no comeback date on the old metropolitan artery.

The Los Morancos luminaire at the Rialto Theater projects the joy of talented and low-cost shows compared to blockbusters. Outside the Renoir Princesa cinemas, in Plaza de Los Cubos, a drip of spectators browse the billboard.

The ticket office informs the journalist.

A married couple in their forties whisper the titles.

«We come frequently.

We had nothing planned, so this fuss has not disrupted any initiative ", say coordinated like those bored couples of centuries.

Choose

to rejoice the body.

Everything pointed to that decision. The terraces, the terraces again, bubble through Martín de los Heros, compared to the other Renoirs, the so-called Renoir Plaza de España, where they do not sell popcorn.

In the others yes.

Spectators will eat them out of the corner of the masks.

Marisa drinks a cold white wine at a table with her friend Carmina.

I begin to notice, when it comes to asking, a worrying penchant for older women.

Like a serial killer in Victorian London.

Marisa's new isolation has annoyed her trip to La Granja: «I was going to go with my daughter, but we have seen

, very good movie.

I recommend it ».

The people are truly holy in their resignation.

conveys a cold fear.

The few lit windows are more disturbing than those flooded by darkness.

At his feet he has closed the small neighborhood whiskey restaurant, Petit Poupée.

The Chinese bought it.

He lived off the drunken and clueless hotel guests at dawn.

Alone in the early morning, a helicopter of the Nationals patrols the immaculate sky this Saturday morning low.

The noise of the rotor bounces off the windows of Centro Plaza Río 2. On the banks of the Manzanares, bicycles form considerable traffic jams.

Fathers, mothers, children and a grandfather pedal.

Others skate and the rest run.

The zaragata de lanes does not end, miraculously, in any accident.

Nobody resists dressing up in the sports caravan.

Sitting in front of the main door of the Center, a curious character waits.

Openwork gorilla, plaid shirt, a brown vest, gray pants and sandals more spring than autumn.

Like the day.

.

Muslim and a native of Kosovo.

He left his land 15 years ago.

A white mustache peeks above the mask.

He opens his green eyes when he doesn't understand Spanish well.

That he is not fluent either.

Which does not prevent his aim: «Politicians are worthless.

He should have been in Barcelona today ».

.

"I mess around at houses, I go where they call me," says the old Kosovar man who expresses himself with his strong hands with thick fingers.

Remember the war with horror.

Her testimony puts everything else in perspective: Inside the shopping malls, still almost empty at 12 noon, Claudia pushes an empty baby stroller tied to a gas balloon.

As if hanging from a colored buoy.

Her husband walks behind with the youngest, tired of a chair.

Ahead, the middle of the family and the older sister, a pre-adolescent to whom the mother points with her eyes when she talks about the irresponsibility of young people: "Let's see if they take it seriously, they are bugging us." .

The bug's contagion curve did not skyrocket by itself.

There is no magic bullet.

.

"Better this way, the outlook for risks is not there," Claudia says. Claudio, it is by chance, leads the family platoon by bike of three on the left bank of the river.

The kid also wears a protective helmet.

Maria, the woman, rebuts Claudio: "We were not going to go."

"I do," he replies.

"But I already told you that you were not leaving," ditch Maria.

.

They wanted, or the hunched man wanted, to climb the northern mountains of Madrid.

They will end up seeing

When the morning is due at around one in the afternoon,

.

Along the pond promenade, a giant panda bear occupies the place where Faemino and Tired forged their careers.

A couple of older ladies - I will tell the inclination in therapy - chat at the entrance of the door that leads to Martín's tavern, in Menéndez Pelayo.

Juanita and Pepa are from the neighborhood and the park is their lung: «We do not care about all the measures of the Government and of the politicians, who are Tócame Roque's house, as long as the park is not closed to us.

We're not going anywhere anymore.

This one [for Pepa] walks six kilometers a day.

.

That he is the nicest and most competent of all those in power.

Such is the boredom.

Juanita represents all of Madrid.

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