Madrid rises with a pearl gray covering the sky. It’s raining a little, but it looks like a good rain is going to fall today so number one won’t get booed as much. A “jet lag” due to the distance he traveled to get away from number two. A noise that almost sounds like a hum begins to fill the entire landscape like a soundtrack. A day which celebrates crossbreeding, this Spain which has become giant and which makes certain individuals who grew up under the generous affection of bourgeois nationalisms blush. What a lesson from Juli the other afternoon. A trembling and clumsy hand that salutes twice because deep down he is a coward. The other in front. National Bullfighting Award and with more life and death consequences than a trench soldier. Madrid has these things. One October 12, already a long time ago, we left a nightclub in lower Orense at dawn. There, it continues with its bad people and a few sandwiches which, as the night progresses, raise their corners of crumbs like drawbridges. We were trying to find a taxi. We walked to Castellana and our suspicions that we had entered a third world war were confirmed. We encountered entire battalions, battle tanks, squads of the Royal Guard, hell, the Legion. Fer and I had a good collection of glasses, but as we came across more different flags, African Regulars uniforms, snow, Air, Navy, Land; It seemed that the entire Spanish army was preparing to go to the front, to the last front. Meanwhile, Fer and I were hesitant to enlist at the first opportunity. It seemed imminent. Today there would be gunshots, maybe bombs. Thank God, I thought, my parents were in Norteña. I’m sure it would be safer there. And my brothers. Where will this new order have taken them, this new day which dawns differently because we have entered into war. At war. I’m glad, Fer told me, that we burned that night together. Me too, Fer. We were no longer afraid of finding a taxi. We continued down Castellana towards Colón and I remember it was raining. Like yesterday morning when I went out early in the morning to take Saba, our labrador. It wasn’t even half past seven in the morning. And the sky was also covered with that pearl gray that Fer and I had while walking in the monumental gray of Nuevos Ministerios. Yet none of us knew what was happening. But we consider it essential to protect yourself either at your place or at mine, so as not to make a decision in the heat of the moment. We entered García de Paredes Street, leaving two whole companies of legionnaires for coffee and drinks at the Tormes bar. The one who was always there. Before opening the portal, Fer approached one of them. My chest was bigger than my back. It was raining in Madrid, but this legionnaire was of another race. He told Fer that the parade started early, at ten o’clock, and that it was a happy October 12th. National Day. A revealing cascade of images became clearer in my head about everything that was happening. We were not going to war. Nor was it necessary to enlist or hide in García de Paredes. The parade, Fer, man… We kissed because neither of us had to go to the front. Then we invited the legionnaire and five other registrants from the same company to a photo session. They came from Ronda. Fer invited him for a second shot. And immense joy filled us as the corporal stood at attention as he bid us farewell at our gate. We had two coffees and went out to get wet to watch the parade. That’s why this morning, when I saw suspicious lights, those of the riot police, those of a line of military jeeps going up the Paseo de Reina de Cristina at seven thirty, I remembered that it It was the parade, of Fer, of the legionnaire, of the Tormes, the Night of Ourense, its sandwiches, Norteña, my parents and the happy people that we were when everything was still to be done. But I don’t know if I would go back then, with everything there is today. It could have been otherwise, but it was like that. And I really like to think that National Day reminds me of where I come from, while the rain and the parade in the background are the only things that haven’t changed since then.
