Tourist-depleted Madrid is a strange place in the demonic August heat

One dozen razor clams on a plate. Forty degrees of heat. It’s mid-afternoon in the Casa de las Navajas. One person stands at the bar, beaming over an Albariño. The simple beaker is scuffed with the previous custom of crowds. Full-length windows are folded back and the bar gives completely on to the Plaza de Cascorro. Tables and seats are all set. The wine is almost chilled; this feels nearly normal. A handful of clients sit eating outside. But here? Just the staff and yer man scoffing the clams and washing them down with white.

Standing at the counter is one of life’s great pleasures. You inspect the toil of staff; you get a refill fast; you disguise your solitude by shifting imperceptibly to make way for other customers. In Dublin it is currently outlawed but in Madrid it seems possible. Stools are slotted around several-metre-distanced, tall, square tables pushed flush with the counter. On clam six, you sneakily slide your fare on to the zinc surface. This is the life! But on clam seven, the barman deftly slides your plate and glass back onto the abutting table. This is the Covid curb!

Boiling thoughts

The heat is demonic. Madrid’s 40 degrees feels like an assassin training a hairdryer on your head. Inside that head is the boiling thought it has been a long time since a hairdryer was needed. August forces some city residents to flee; outlets often close for summer breaks despite the peak demand of tourists. Lockdowns make it increasingly tricky to tell what’s open or closed. The eighth month has always flavoured the city: the resulting slower pace is a treat for the urban connoisseur.

A couple of years ago, staff and clientele took a clock off the wall in a bar on the Calle del Limón. Crazed with the heat and the toll taken by refreshments, they rolled the circular timepiece up and down the street gutter outside. A rigid Daliesque reference – the ticking clock was one of the few things that had not melted in the heat.

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Covid-enforced absence does things to the heart’s fondness. Pressed up against a glass window, face flattened and eyes focused, sometimes you can see more. On a plane for the first time in 18 months, portholes become magnifiers. The clouds and endless blue are still wonderful. Passengers still annoy or intrigue in the condensed Canterbury Tales pilgrimage of the two-hour inter-city flight.

Won’t it be good to see Covid warnings in Spanish, to hear different words muffled through masks? The plane is 80 per cent full. It hugs a small arc across Europe: down there is damaged culture and economy. Low over Madrid, the flight feels like a diagram of a trajectory; early-year Covid illness and recent vaccines have lent you a weird mobility, an unearned set of wings.

F-word Esperanto

For a few hours it’s Howard Hughes on his holidays. It feels wrong to be close to strangers. Changing train at Colombia station, you curse in the Esperanto of the F-word when you find line 9 is closed. A first trip on public transport is odd and uneasy. No way is it socially distanced. The train veers around a subterranean twist. Virus-wary, you are forced to grab a handrail.

It is hard to strip out the factors of Covid, August and extreme heat. But there are almost no tourists discernible and few locals out and about. Malasana and Lavapiés are the opposite of busy. Familiar outlets of dingy and dive-like essence are gradually changing hands. Aged, weary barmen, like figures fallen from a Cervantes novel, seem to be fading. Their simple acceptance of "dos cervezas" Spanish has further given way to the fluent multilingual flow of smiley young stylists whose customer service greeting feels like PR.

Maybe it is August. Maybe Covid economics and natural wastage have cleared the way for new staff. Or maybe there is no greater agent of change than time and the frequent visitor’s jaded eye.

Plaza de las Comendadoras has a neat bar in one of its corners. The Cafe Moderno emanates a reassuring babble of voices. Under the twin sun protection of green awning and two-table parasols that intersect like Venn circles, a seat outside offers a perch from which to observe the Saturday-afternoon empty square.

There is the dull xylophone roll of metallic window blinds on a balcony as an old lady lays out some clothes on a drying rack. A couple emerge from the bar and scuttle away along a wall that affords them little shade. Ice cubes struggle to stay in shape. The Moderno name gradually melts into the similar sound of a vaccine.