Noir novel route: 04. hotel Madrid / monument to Cairasco de Figueroa

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Routes · Subcategory: Noir novel route

The Hotel Madrid was an archaic but pleasant building. Its restaurant, with the walls laden with photos of famous and not so famous guests who had stayed there (including, paradoxically, a photo of Francisco Franco, who had stayed there between the 17th and 18th July 1936), was well known as a meeting point for the intellectuals, artists and political red militants of the capital. Freezing cold on one of the terrace tables outside (smoking was prohibited on the inside), Gloria and Monroy let night fall around them in the company of bottle of Barón de Ley and a dish of fried cheese and marmelade.

The bust of Cairasco seemed to flinch at the constant bird droppings landing on it and stray balls kicked at it by guests' children playing around the terrace (guests who used to let their kids loose and turn a deaf ear to them as they made life unbearable for passers by). The bust turned its back on them, perhaps wondering what the point was of so much enlightenment and so much work to get through, just to put up with a dozen or so spoilt kids mucking around there, and the crap dumped on it by winged rats. 

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