Once upon a time, there was a small restaurant on the corner of the square with a limited but excellent selection of simple tapas and wine. Suddenly, the restaurant was gone, but the wall I used to face when enjoying drinks on the terrace was still there. It’s the wall of a derelict building, and it makes me incredibly happy—so many images and colors swirling and tumbling over each other.
For me, it represents the vibrant neighborhood of El Carmen, and in part, the Spanish soul. Cees Nooteboom once wrote that Spanish art is about three things: sex, death, and religion. That’s partly true, but he misses one very essential component: La fiesta! Spanish life and art are certainly also about that.