At night:
There’s still light in the sky at 10:30 pm. Its neon indigo glow is intensified by the pollution and the delirium caused by the heat rising off the pavement. It seeps into your shoes and rolls its way up your body, making your stomach churn and your chest tighten. The air is thick and stuffy. The repetitive churn of generators powering misting fans on restaurant terrazas breaks thoughts up into fragmented images, making it harder to form full sentences. A man shouts in the distance. Glass smashes at the bottom of the recycling bin. The smell of perfume and soap lingers in doorways, intermingling with exhaust fumes and food and piss. Orange streetlights burn like stars. A rising hum reverberates across the city as people slowly emerge from their cool, dark refuges until the streets are bubbling with chatter like an angry beehive that’s fallen on its side. Cutlery clanks against crockery. Drivers hoot their horns as a motorcycle scrapes past. Packs of neighbourhood dogs zoom up and down plazas with wagging tails in celebration of the night, slurping up water under the watchful eyes of their owners. Every so often, an elusive breeze passes by like a warm patch in a swimming pool, always just a few inches ahead of you, always slightly out of reach. Did you imagine it? Workers hurl the contents of large plastic containers into refuge trucks crunching past and shutters slam against the ground as bars shut down. A police siren wails. A man vomits next to a doorway as two young boys ring electric scooter bells incessantly, shouting for their long-lost friends, eventually stumbling toward a half-empty night bus, meeting the eyes of an overworked driver taking a break. As the city dozes off with a lit cigarette in its mouth and a beer balanced on its belly, a merry set of keys jingle their way past a man lying on a scrap of cardboard on a bench.
During the day:
If the early morning tropical temperatures don’t wake you up, the sound of the local knife sharpener’s shrill chiflo will as he walks from street to street announcing his arrival. Smoke. Smoke on the horizon, smoke in the wind… Smoke from nearby forest fires peppers the air of Madrid, and so I find myself thinking of toasted marshmallows, braaivleis, pap and bredie, and somersaults in rockpools… At midday, the light outside is blinding, even with sunglasses on, causing your eyes to water, a problem exacerbated by melting sunscreen. As temperatures rise, the lucky few close their windows and lower their blinds, plug in a fan or possibly switch on the A.C., taking refuge in cool, dark microhabitats. This is for the best, as everyone is feeling rather angry and fatigued at this point, resulting in a number of on-foot collisions on overpacked, sticky pavements. I like to call the space of time between 12:45 pm and 2:45 pm instant sunburn hours; most people avoid being outside at this point if they can but at 3 pm the shadows get long enough for a shady walk around the block – only the uninformed or the ill-advised walk on the sunny side of the road. The heat reaches its peak between 5 and 8 pm in the city centre, where thermometers read 36°C on good days but can reach up to 40° and over on not-so-good days (Madrid Retiro: 40,7 °C, 14 de agosto de 2021). This is mostly due to the urban heat island effect, which exacerbates the consequences of climate change in urban areas, turning cities like Madrid into giant ovens, and causing air-conditioned ‘refugios climaticos’ or ‘climatic refuges’ (featuring free Wi-Fi, plant nurseries, and influencer-friendly nooks, such as the hammock corner in El Circulo de las Bellas Artes) to open up across the city. At 8 pm, I open my balcony. A brown swift flies into my room in a confused panic and hides under my bed. I place a bowl of water next to it. Outside, the sound of construction is a constant, with builders often toiling away at all hours, despite the heat. As the sun finally sets around 9:30 pm, the city is smothered in a powerful orange light that bounces off buildings and car windows, burning on a blue-hilled horizon and fading into creamy peach as blackbirds dart across the sky in exciting new formations, announcing the highly anticipated start of the evening.