The Real Palacio Real

Location: Madrid, Spain

Wednesday July 30, 2010

It was hard skipping delicious Spanish lunch with my family for the first time. What were they going to do with the 3-person serving that was meant to be on my plate that afternoon? But I swallowed the cries of my stomach and decided to do some hardcore sightseeing that afternoon between morning Spanish grammar and afternoon class at the Prado. Besides, the metro was still on full-on strike, so staying at the house for lunch and trying to rush over to the Prado wouldn’t have worked anyways. As my mother always says whenever I mess something up again, “smart people never make the same mistake twice.” Geez, thanks Mum.
El Palacio Real (The Royal Palace) is located smackdab on the western part of the historical centre of the city. It is the official home of kings since the mid-18^th century after it was rebuilt when the Old Palace burnt up in the same location. My man, Juan, i.e.: King Juan Carlos, is too humble to live in such a grand place. So his family lives in the smaller Palacio de la Zarzuela, on the outskirts of Madrid, reserving El Palacio Real for state ceremonies. And I can tell why they chose to do this… who would want to spend fifteen minutes to walk from one side of the house to the other? Of course it would be fifteen minutes of walking through luxuriously decorated rooms, but still, you wouldn’t get much done. I imagine that the court people’s room bars would be always bright green if they were Sims characters.

Actually, that’s what it felt like. Despite the space and the numerous decorated rooms being utterly impressive so much so that I was visually ODing, the often disparate décor from room to room made me feel like I was walking through a large, large, large Sims palace built with some Royal Expansion Pack in which the player decided to use all the available wallpapers, carpeting, and decorations. I mean, why not throw in some entirely oriental-themed rooms to impress state guests with your worldliness and make those rooms completely stick out? My favorite was the throne room, where the deep detailed rugs and the blood red velvet walls absorbed any possible echoes. The royal dining room was über large, too. The table was so long, the chairs seem to go on forever. King Juan Carlos and the Ketchup President (aka Obama, who was given that nickname by some of the Spanish press after they showed him squirting a generous amount of catsup on his hamburger before eating the thing over a chat with Zapatero, the president of Spain) would eat here for official dindins.

And guess what? I made it to my Prado class with even half an hour to spare so I could people-watch and munch on a bocadillo de tortilla española (fav ><”), because I walked across the city instead of trying to cram myself into a bus. As I explored the side streets on my way to the Prado, I realized just how much I was going to miss the city. Six weeks to study in such a cosmopolitan setting where there’s always something new going on was just not enough. There were still so many places I wanted to visit. Sure, within those six weeks, I had covered all the major points of interest, but what about those side streets and secret spots to people-watch that I still have not discovered? ¡Awww, te echo de menos, Españaaaa!

We spent our last class looking at Goya’s famous black paintings. Looking at those private murals that Goya painted whilst depressed and insane during his last years of his life created a strange sense of finality to the class. Our professor chose to look at El Perro as our last painting, ending on a refreshingly different note when almost the entirety of the class focused on religious works and royal portraits.