Baroja's Madrid

Pío Baroja was born in San Sebastián in 1872 and lived most of his childhood in Pamplona, where his father worked as a mining engineer. Years later, the whole family moved to Madrid, where Baroja completed his secondary education and received his medical degree. During this time, and in the company of his friends, he would roam Madrid's underworld: the Rastro Flea Market, Las Vistillas Garden, the Príncipe Pío hill, and the neighbourhoods of Cuatro Caminos, Ventas and Vallecas… It was these rambles as a young boy that would lay the foundations of the writer's knowledge of Madrid at the turn of the century, which he captured in works such as The Adventures, Inventions and Trickeries of Silvestre Paradox, The Quest, Red Dawn, and Nights at the Buen Retiro.

After the war, and until his death in 1956, Baroja lived at No. 12, Calle de Ruiz de Alarcón, close to El Retiro Park. It was during this period of reflection that an English friend of the author's, who was taking photos of Madrid, asked him to write something about the capital. Almost all of the quotes in this map, unless stated otherwise, are taken from his essay entitled A Fading Spain.

Pío Baroja writes of a Madrid that never sleeps, home to layabouts, bohemians, workers, and the affluent. He was also drawn to street musicians, whom he would visit regularly to learn their songs, beggars, water vendors, and all types of hawkers and their well-known cries.

Carmen Caro 31 May 2022

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