Ran to the Museo

Started the day sitting in bed, drinking tea and watching swifts wheel over the red tiled roofs outside the hotel window.  Peaceful.  

Walked with Emily down to the conference centre, an old building with a modern interior which was hideously lit in a blue light that made us all look unearthly.  There was a huge stained glass ceiling over the top that felt religious but wasn’t.  

At lunch Al and I went out looking for an old Spanish box of Golondrina matches that Vikram wanted but the guy at the shop said they weren’t made any more. 

At the end of the day i rushed over to the Prado, which was the opposite side of the square to look at Las Meninas and the other Velazquez.  He is a painter that i have always found powerful and even though i I only had half an hour in the museum it didn’t disappoint. 

Dinner was in a room alongside the modern art museum and the highlight of the evening was the guided tour to see Guernica, the great Picasso painting that is so totemic for Spain.  Our guide was brilliant, giving it context, a detailed analysis and talking us through its history of it including the means by which the Spanish managed to prize it back from MOMA where it had been housed ‘until democracy returned to Spain’   Basically they found the receipt! 

Bed late and slightly jangled by the day.  Conferences always make me a bit nervy…