May 15 is San Isidro Day, the day of Madrid’s patron saint. In true Madrileño fashion, that requires festivities from…

I. The List/The Group Sometimes it’s hard to remember those first dark days of Covid, when we all convinced ourselves…

Between the last walk I took in the park and now, it has become an exuberance of lilacs. The green…

It has been an odd spring. Back in January and February, when it ought to have rained, it stubbornly refused…

This morning, porteros were busily, ineffectually sluicing dust blown from the Sahara off Madrid’s doorsteps. The meteorologists tweeted: “don’t go…

Saturday morning, I got the text: the person I’d spent a few hours with on Friday was suddenly part of…

Today, for the first time since Christmas Eve, I’ll be able to walk outside our apartment without wearing a surgical…

(He Who is Hungry Thinks of Bread) To be bereft, the late 16th-century past participle of bereave. With its idiot rhymes:  to…

America, as in the United States of — because once you’ve left it you discover America encompasses a lot more…

This morning, there were figs at the frutería, with a dusky purplish bloom to them like grapes, exotic and twice the…