Bohemian Lights Free Tour

There is a Madrid that does not appear on the postcards: the one of penniless poets, taverns of rough wine and cafés where the world was put to rights until dawn. On this free tour of about two hours you dive right into the Barrio de las Letras and Santa Ana to follow in the footsteps of Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and of "Luces de Bohemia", the play with which in 1920 he turned Spanish theatre upside down and coined a word you will not get out of your head: the esperpento.

The heart of the tour is the Callejón del Gato, the narrow Calle de Álvarez Gato where the concave and convex mirrors that distort anyone who stops in front still hang. There, in scene twelve of the play, the blind poet Max Estrella lets loose the idea that changes everything: classical heroes reflected in distorting mirrors give the esperpento, and Spain, he says, is a grotesque distortion of European civilisation. We tell you who the flesh-and-blood figure behind Max was, the bohemian Alejandro Sawa, who died blind and ruined in 1909, and why his funeral is one of the saddest and truest scenes in Madrid's literature.

From there we walk along Huertas and its verses set into the ground, pass through the Plaza de Santa Ana with the Teatro Español and the lifelong beer houses, and look in on the century-old taverns where writers, bullfighters and rogues of good and bad living sat to argue. You will see where Cervantes and Lope de Vega lived almost next door to each other, you will understand what a café tertulia was and how the nightlife, precarious and luminous at once, of early 20th-century Madrid worked. It is not a literature class, it is a walk with stories you understand on your feet.

This tour is part of Trip Tours EU, our network of free tours across the capitals of Europe. It fits perfectly if you are two or three days in Madrid and want an afternoon that breaks from the Palace and Prado circuit, and also if Madrid is one more stop on a bigger trip through Lisbon, Paris or Rome: Valle-Inclán's esperpento speaks to the whole European bohemia of its time, and here you see it in its most authentically local version. A good plan for dusk, when the neighbourhood starts to fill up.

The contribution to the guide is voluntary and indicative, around 15-20 euros per person, and is given at the end according to how you found the tour. Booking your spot is free and only serves to let the guide know how many people to expect. Small groups, in Spanish and on the ground, unhurried and with time to ask questions.