Evolution

I've said it before, but man, does Madrid change fast. I've been away for a month, and in that time, a new subway entrance has gone up at Corte Ingles, there's a new bar on our street where none had existed before, and just around the corner, the Restaurante Capitan Alatriste has opened, complete with a wall-sized version of The Surrender at Breda, and other 17th-centuryish accoutrements.

What's more, the crowded, noisy, car-jammed stretch that was once Calle Arenal has turned into a crowded, noisy, pedestrian walkway. Admittedly, the change wasn't exactly sudden: there was many months there of jackhammers and dust. So many, in fact, that one began to suspect, as one often does in Madrid, that the obras would never finish. Needless to say, it comes as something of a surprise when they do.