‘Well, I always liked Madrid!’ is my father’s verdict on the city; a verbal shrug that manages both to damn with faint praise and gesture at a powerful, unspoken criticism. There is some truth in both: Madrid often finds herself crowded out of ‘Great Cities of the World’ lists and has struggled to win top billing as a tourist attraction, even within Spain itself. The perpetual bridesmaid, despite her official capital status (hello Ottawa, Ankara, and Canberra), she has long been forced to hold the glittering train of Gaudí’s Barcelona. It has taken the zeal and outsider’s gaze of a convert – the accomplished Australian writer and honorary madrileño, Luke Stegemann – to draw her from the shadows in a self-described ‘expression of love … and act of recovery’.
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