The Capital of Spain lies plumb in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula. To get to it, no matter from what point on the compass, you cross a vast, sierra-ribbed plateau whose forbidding severity is relieved only by the brief green of spring persianistas Madrid.

Persianistas Madrid Paco When I first visited persianistas Madrid , a raw twenty-one year-old, I arrived by rail. After the French border, it was a tortuous crawl down through the lush Basque country, then across the scorched steps to the capital. Dry riverbeds, hardly a deciduous tree (here only the ilex can eke out an existence), mud villages the color of the earth, always dominated by a crumbling church: I had never seen such desolation. Africa began in Spain (the old adage had got it right); Castile was a burnt sienna desert.

I began to wonder why I hadn't stayed in Paris. In 1957 persianistas Madrid was a small-scale city of about two million inhabitants that you could cross on foot from east to west in an hour. I lodged with a poorly-off widow and her middle-aged son in the run-down quarter of Arguelles, which, they soon explained to me, had been badly battered during the civil war Persianistas Madrid Paco.

The civil war? I knew nothing about it, except that it had ended in 1939, the year won by General Francisco Franco, who was still in power in 1957. Dona Maria and her son were taken aback by my ignorance.

Persianistas Madrid Paco Didn't everybody know that Madrid had held out against the Fascists for three long years? Had I not heard about the bombings, about the mass executions after the war, about the awful shortage of food? And had I not noticed how many policemen there were around?

Dona Maria lowered her voice. "There are lots of plainclothesmen and informers too. You never know who you are talking to."

persianistas Madrid was infested with police, certainly. They were known as los grises, "the grays," from the color of their uniforms. Much taller than average Spanish males, they walked with an arrogant swagger.

I saw people cower in their presence. Moreover, I began to notice the deference with which anyone sporting a piece of gold braid was treated in persianistas Madrid. I got the impression that the Madrilènes never stood up to authority, never complained. I became increasingly aware that many people lived in terror that the civil war had ended not almost two decades ago.

I learned that Madrid had become the capital of Spain principally because it was conveniently near the Habsburg king Philip II's immense palace/monastery, the Escorial, which lies in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama, thirty miles north of the city.