A Lavapiés Mystery

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Clarissa

September 26, 2026

I’m staying in Lavapiés, a very central area of Madrid. In front of the quaint but heavily remodeled apartment building where I’m staying, a group of Latin American men has been standing in the street all day. I arrived at 1:30 pm, and they were standing there drinking beer and talking. I accessed my apartment and unpacked, went out to find a grocery store, returned with the groceries, cooked, ate, rested, went back out to buy mineral water, returned, went back out to go to the bookstore, but the men were still there, standing in the street in front of the building.

These are nice men, very polite, not in the least threatening, if maybe a bit too friendly for the state of exhaustion in which I find myself. Why are they standing there, though? I understand that they are not exactly Nordic and don’t mind the heat the way I do. But it’s several hours standing there and talking. They’re not selling anything. They don’t want anything from the passersby, aside from paying an occasional compliment to a lady. It’s a mystery, and I only wish I had the energy to strike up a conversation and find out.

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3 responses to “A Lavapiés Mystery”

Avi

September 27, 2026

Oh, it’s easily explained. If these Latin-American men are at all like those we have here in Milan, they’re enjoying themselves drinking and chatting with other men from Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia while their wives are working in the food and beverage industry, or as domestic help or caregivers to the elderly. Sometimes the men will do odd jobs, like electricity and plumbing, for which they have no skills nor qualifications, but those jobs are in high demand and pay very well. In the evening they go home, where their wives will have dinner ready for them. A case of flipped gender roles, maybe?

Men from Colombia or Venezuela you don’t normally see loitering around during the day because they are in the drug pushing business. They typically sleep during the day, the come out late in the evening and work during the night, in the streets or in the areas of the movida – bars, discos, that kind of place.

The men from Argentina and Chile tend to have Italian citizenship by descent, are generally educated and get a job like every other law-abiding citizen.

We don’t get many people from Mexico or Central America here: I guess they move to the US rather than Europe, or maybe to Spain.

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cliff arroyo

September 27, 2026

“staying in Lavapiés”

All I know from Lavapiés is a line from a song by Granados/Periquet (el majo discreto)

¿Cuál es el secreto?
¿Qué el majo guardó?
Sería indiscreto contarlo yo
No poco trabajo costará saber
Secretos de un majo con una mujer
Nació en Lavapiés
¡Eh, ¡eh! ¡Es!
¡Un majo, un majo es!

And I know a song from the Zarzuela “El Barberillo de Lavapiés” (como nací en la calle)

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1. Clarissa
  
  September 27, 2026
  
  I like it because it’s close to everything, but the area has gone enormously downhill in the past couple of years. There is a very bad problem with trash, which, in this weather, creates a bad stench. But I can walk everywhere from here, so it’s worth it.
  
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