Would I ever want to live in Madrid? I didn’t know. I hadn’t been there so before going prepared vigorously, studying maps and scouring cyberspace and printing out stacks of material that bulged from three folders. In Madrid I annotated my reference material and encouraged local citizens to also do so. I jumped into dozens of taxis and walked several miles a day. I fired questions in Spanish and English and took notes and made outlines for several features that preceded this one, and wrote some of them in my hotel room, and worked nearly as hard this vacation as I do teaching and writing. I really can’t travel any other way.

I was amazed and delighted – my research missed this feature – that summer dusk in Madrid doesn’t descend until about a quarter to ten. Eight o’clock there looks like six p.m. most places in the United States. That encouraged me to get out and join the throngs who comprise the middle class street culture of Spain’s capital city. There are many very old plazas and cobblestone streets meant for horses rather than vehicles, which are banned on some streets and rare on others. People enjoy unimpeded options to walk and shop and step into restaurants and relax in sidewalk cafes. Solitary musicians and groups play jazz and rock as well as traditional Spanish songs. The scent of marijuana floats in from mysterious places.

For six straight days I was drawn to the streets in ways I rarely am when home. And now, already, I’m yearning for those safe and exciting places to stroll. I learned where to go to avoid pickpockets and hard-drinking young adults. I need a street like Calle de Fuencarral loaded with shoppers, diners, athletic people who’ve just left the gym, and parents pushing babies in strollers. One block of Fuencarral hosts four theaters, three of them offering independent films that, unlike many commercial movies, neither insult nor diminish human dignity. I want to see ornate old buildings bordering all these activities. I crave energy and excitement.

I know I’d be delighted with the variety of museums, galleries, restaurants, concerts, plays, and sports in Madrid. There’s plenty of professional basketball, my favorite sport, and I could try to become a soccer aficionado. I’d also move hoping the National Football League would be available on at least a limited, delayed-TV basis. I heard the club football is also pretty good.

I’m not fantasizing about a nonexistent paradise. Unemployment in Spain is about twenty percent and their debt is mountainous, and there are many other problems. Alcohol and drug consumption is too high. Immigration is likely to become an incendiary issue as poor people pursuing a dream continue to pour in from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. For me, as a nonresident of the European Union, there would also be difficulties in obtaining resident and work documents, and the considerable task of finding an appropriate job. So I’m not claiming Madrid is a panacea for all earthly ills. I’m simply saying that at seven o’clock on this summer night I wish I could start walking on Calle de Fuencarral and stop at one of the city’s low-fat yogurt shops or revisit that Cuban restaurant where owners and employees from Cuba, Peru, and Bangladesh greeted me like an old friend.