Sleeping in San Fernando

Madrid in August. It’s all I ever expected. Siestas in the Retiro, suppers at 10 and street parties with sweat, tequila spilling through the stones of an ancient city. The only snag is our place of rest: the suburb of San Fernando, where a World City’s hype cannot persuade normality’s curfew. On a bus trip past factories and warehouses, the Spanish plains could be anywhere in the world.

But on these trips “home” we leave the tourbooks on some plaza with up-turned chairs, bundled tablecloths and sangria stains. One night as I almost nod off against the window, my eyes rest on a woman’s bangles. Then, her Spanish tan and coral dress. She hangs over her seat to a girl behind her... prattling, smiling, flinging her fingers. I can’t catch a word.

She sees our odd party: backpacks and moonbags, another hemisphere’s winter skin. “Where you from?” she asks in a laced tongue. Someone shouts, "South Africa!" She looks quizzical. “Cape Town..?” we add. I sleepily see my city back home: postcards of Table Mountain and Europeans sunning naked on Clifton. The woman shrugs and laughs. I pull my mind closer, to the women at mass in Almudena Cathedral... rosaries and wrinkles... muttering in musty tongues. I thought they were true Madrilenians. And she is too.

San Fernando arrives with the dull lights of a restaurant closed. We go our own ways: she to a man on a motorbike and a helmet tucked under his arm. He envelopes her and all the scents of a long working day, an age-old city. They splutter off to an apartment with plants, a dog to walk and TV to watch. Or so I imagine. Will she ever wonder about our home? "Cape Town"… placeless, somewhere off the sea.

I have eaten tapas, walked the main plazas and found the great bear statue in the heart of Madrid. But as we walk home past each house asleep, I promise to remember her bangles, her late commute and her man on the motorbike. I have brushed shoulders with another. We drew our geographies together. And I glimpsed the everyday.