🏳️🌈 The Tapa Weekend: July 5
Madrid Pride (march and parade!), parties around town and drinking from a chato.
By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | July 5, 2024 | Madrid | Issue #61
🎉 Welcome to a new issue of The Tapa: Weekend Edition! An English-language newsletter about what to do this weekend in Madrid (plus memes!)
🤑 The Tapa is now offering paid subscriptions, and we’d be deeply thrilled if you purchased one to help build this enterprise we’ve had so much fun creating. And a big THANK YOU to those who already support us!
🇪🇸 If you haven’t subscribed at all yet, hit that button below so you have some fresh ideas in your inbox every Friday about where to go and what to do.
🫶 And if you have, please share this with your friends!
Here Are 5 Things to Do in Madrid This Weekend
Happy Friday, everyone!
Madrid Pride is in full swing, the summer weather is here to stay and if you’re looking for a few things to do, you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s face it, every year the Orgullo celebrations pretty much suck all the oxygen out of the room. It’s hard to find something to do that is not rainbow-themed so rather than fighting it, we suggest you give in to a couple of tintos in Plaza Chueca with the drag queens. Trust us, it’s fun.
There are many options for you in central Madrid, so grab your fancy fan, your sunglasses, your bottle of water and surrender to the non-stop fun that is Madrid Orgullo 2024.
Enjoy.
1. MADO 2024: March and Parade (Madrid Pride, Part 1)
Alright, grab your pen and paper because you’ve got tons of options. Fun fact: the Madrid Pride (official name: MADO 2024) is the city’s biggest celebration every year and Europe’s biggest Pride with nearly two million people flying into the capital from all over the world to roam the streets while waiving little rainbow-colored flags.
The biggest event during the Semana del Orgullo? Of course, it’s tomorrow’s Pride march and parade. Under the slogan “Education, rights and peace: a Pride that transforms”, the march will start at around 7 p.m., leaving from the Atocha train station towards Plaza de Colón in Salamanca. It will be followed by some 50 floats that will cruise down Paseo del Prado, Cibeles and Paseo de Recoletos.
Most people will converge on those three areas so bring plenty of water, sunscreen, a hat and snacks (and if you don’t like to stand for long periods of time, a foldable chair). Also, the floats are always fashionably late so don’t be surprised if it’s 11 p.m. and you’ve only seen two of them. This is Spain, after all. Where nothing happens before 2 a.m..
Pride Week also features several stages set up in key areas of downtown Madrid (Plaza Pedro Zerolo, Plaza de las Reinas, Puerta del Sol and Plaza España) that will feature live performances tonight, tomorrow and on Sunday night. They all happen simultaneously so it’s impossible to see them all. Pick the ones you want to see and get ready to run around and elbow your way towards the stage. They are all included in the MADO 2024 program, which you can check here (notable mentions: Mr. Gay Spain competition tonight and Nebulossa on Sunday).
MADO 2024. Multiple locations around Madrid. Check program for schedules.
2. MADO 2024: The Parties (Madrid Pride, Part 2)
There are too many Pride parties this weekend and it would be impossible to name them all. If you head over to Chueca, there are countless LGBT bars and nightclubs with plenty of fun, each one of them offering drink specials, hilarious drag queen performances and themed nights. All of them are (usually) worth visiting.
But there are a few venues that are more popular than others and every year it’s common to see people begging for someone to sell them tickets to them on Instagram. If you don’t have one, tough luck because they are all sold out online. HOWEVER, most of these venues offer first come, first serve tickets at the door a few hours before opening, so if you really want to get in, we suggest you try that option.
Tanga Party: Britney Spears, the Spice Girls and Rocío Durcal are in the house (their songs, not the actual people). If Ru Paul’s Drag Race was a party, this would be it. They are hosting three parties this weekend: tonight (featuring Nebulossa, see video above), tomorrow (featuring Villano Antillano) and Sunday (featuring Nemo, winner of this year’s Eurovision). Tickets are mostly sold out so try the door if you dare.
Churros con Chocolate: This one’s on Sunday afternoon and features drag queens, bubblegum pop music and, you guessed it, they give you literal churros with hot chocolate.
My Pleasure: Fetish party in a venue that’s open to all (so not just LGBT). Lots of leather and EDM. Very different from Tanga party but still fun if you’re into kinks.
VivaPop: Allegedly the biggest Pride party in Madrid. It features many drag queens from Drag Race Spain, pop music and games.
Have fun!
3. Chatea Madrid: Drinking Wine in Style
The #ChateaMadrid initiative is back this year, providing you with a great excuse to drink wine because, ahem, that’s the best way to learn about wines, maybe.
This awesome event offers the opportunity to discover the PDO (Designation of Origin) wines of Madrid and its authentic cuisine by paying a visit to century-old restaurants and taverns that have over a hundred years of history.
People can enjoy a glass of wine from the D.O. Wines of Madrid Regulatory Council for just €1 (!!) and receive a special chato glass made for the occasion as a gift (that’s where the event’s name comes from, has nothing to do with chatting).
This is a unique opportunity to experience the best wines in historic settings such as Bodega de la Ardosa, Casa Alberto, Casa Ciriaco, Cervecería Alemana, La Casa del Abuelo, Las Cuevas de Luis Candelas, Posada de la Villa, and Taberna Antonio Sánchez.
Oh, and by posting a photo using the hashtag #ChateaMadrid on the social media pages of the Association of Century-Old Restaurants and Taverns of Madrid, participants will be entered into a draw to win two complete wine tourism experiences in the Community of Madrid for two people.
This includes a visit to wineries, wine tasting, a meal, and a gift bottle of wine. Not bad, eh?
Chatea Madrid 2024. Multiple locations around Madrid. Through July 28. Check website for participating venues.
4. Photo Exhibit: Madrid, 40 Years Ago by Javier Campano
Madrid was a very different city back in the early 80s. So different that during this car chase scene on 007’s For Your Eyes Only, James Bond runs into donkeys on the street and farmers suspiciously speaking Latin American-sounding Spanish outside Madrid. Is it an accurate depiction of the country? Probably not, but you get the idea. It was different.
Now you have a chance to see it through the lens of local photographer Javier Campano, featuring “the acuity and visual elegance that are his hallmarks” and as part of the PHotoESPAÑA exhibit. Campano manages to “document the complete transformation of an exciting—and illusory—Madrid in the late 1970s that had major unresolved urban design and housing problems for an increasing population that had flocked there from the rural areas in the preceding decades.
Ye olde city was “at odds with itself in many neighborhoods: huge brick apartment buildings along with a plethora of tenements or often self-built houses without either water or sewage, whose inhabitants aspired to live in these new flats they could not afford”.
“Mud, vegetable patches and mules were the rural iconographies that competed with the rows of enormous brick apartment buildings,” the event’s website tell us. (Huh. Maybe the Bond film was right.) It’s “an impressive archive that is still alive today, neighborhood pride and nostalgia in a shared story”.
Barrios Madrid 1976-1980. El Aguila, Ramírez de Prado, 3. Madrid. Through Sept. 8. Check website for opening hours.
5. 14.4 — A Play About Migrating to Spain from Morocco.
14.4 aims to uses “a starkly realistic yet unabashedly lyrical and poetic language”, to explore the journey that separates two worlds (Spain and Morocco) that sit just 14.4 kilometers apart.
This play revolves around Ahmed, a boy who escapes family abuse to live on the streets of Tangier. In the port city, “he encounters adventures, dreams, and misfortunes, along with an all-consuming obsession: to cross into Spain”. Spain is seen “as paradise on earth, the end of the journey, the Ithaca every traveler dreams of.”
“Ahmed manages to cross to the peninsula hidden in the undercarriage of a truck” at the age of 9. But now that he’s made it onto Iberia, “another odyssey begins—one far from what he had dreamed but not devoid of humor, adventures, networks of solidarity, and unexpected endings”.
More than 20 years have passed since the crossing, and now Ahmed Younoussi takes the stage to share his own story with the audience. A must see.
14.4. Naves del Español en Matadero, Paseo de la Chopera 14, Madrid. Through July 28. Check website for schedule. Tickets: €20.
👨🏻💻 Viral Stories of the Week
⚽️ Spain’s national TV mocks German tourist gambas ahead of the Spain-Germany Eurocopa game. 🤣
You think that red (rojo) hurts? Now prepare to suffer La Roja.
🏖️ Dear influencer, our actual beach vacations are nothing like yours
The granny circle is classic.
🔔 A Message From Our Sponsor
Secret Kingdoms is your English bookstore in Madrid. It specializes in Spanish history and literature, contemporary and classic novels, books for children and young adults of all ages, history and historical fiction, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, poetry, biographies and much more.
Located on Calle de Moratín 7 — a few blocks away from the Prado Museum — and with over 20,000 new and used books, Secret Kingdoms has something for everyone.
Find out more at www.thesecretkingdoms.com
🙏 Once again, please remember to share this newsletter with your friends on social media. The more we grow, the more information we’ll be able to offer each week.
We’ll be back next week with more.