For those over fifty, he was called Braulio. For minors, Felipe. It didn’t matter which one or the other, because they were both the same thing, the same person. In the Plaza del Duque de Pastrana, Felipe had a small green stand, almost as if he … It was an extension of his body. He was big, so big that his face blurred into a sort of silent scream that gave him a monstrous appearance. He had a double chin that you could get lost in. Arms that couldn’t be detached from his body and breathing full of resentment towards a past and present in puffs of smoke. He seemed to be snoring awake. He always wore a leather jacket that he didn’t take off even in the stall. Sometimes, when the winter sun shone directly on him, he would freeze, his hands resting on the glass counter of his booth. He sold sweets, three Turks for five pesetas. Also seeds and some nuts. What was miraculous about Felipe was how he managed to put his fists into some of the shelves in this little kiosk, while children asked him to reach the most inaccessible corners. He came to everything feeling like he never would. But he struggled like an octopus while his trunk and legs remained intact.
Felipe sometimes sold cigarettes in bulk. Other times he invited candy. She did her hair in the water and in the spring, she always wore sunglasses with smoked lenses. He opened his shop early, around eight thirty in the morning, and remained there until seven in the afternoon. Every time he wasn’t there, rumors spread that something had happened to him. Missing his position was inevitable. I once helped him close it. At ten-thirty and five there were queues that surrounded half the place and of course card payments were not accepted. Society was freer. Childhood mixed with adolescence without haste, or cushions to cushion any possible stumbles.
Sometimes scores were settled even though he was not charged. There were shaved men who robbed students, pencil sharpeners who took Pedro Gómez’s coats and feathers, and thugs who sold small bags of hash to the most ignorant. If things were very bad, Félix and Ramón let you take refuge in Enro, which was more than a bar, it was an extension of the living room of our houses. The menu cost seven hundred pesetas and the food was better than in the vast majority of clubs for which today you pay five or six times more. Felipe rarely left his post. He didn’t close anything because no one dared to let him down. And when that happened, it was because he was also at Enro having a drink. This was when workers ate a loin and cheese sandwich with coffee and grounds for breakfast before climbing onto the scaffolding. And the houses did not fall.
We learned that twenty-five pesetas was a fortune thanks to Felipe. Never has so little been enough. He mixed sweet and savory like there were no rules and once he gave me a bag of Monchitos and asked me not to tell anyone about it. Of course I listened to him, because Felipe was an authority in this square, crowded from Monday to Friday and empty on weekends. Going through this on a Sunday was an act of mourning. His stand was closed, barricaded, as if his presence was a thermometer of the city, of the agitation of a Madrid which returned to the starting line every Monday.
Teo sold newspapers on the Plaza. And there it remains, like the last bastion of a Spain that refuses to lose everything that has made us better. Like Felipe, like Enro, like the Hoyos Mari pastry shop that made donuts that were impossible to improve. Like so many things that time has tried to erase with a modernity so poorly understood that it is sad. If Pirulo was the childhood of several generations thanks to the collectible cards in Retiro, Felipe and Braulio, Braulio and Felipe, were in Chamartín. And even if everything stays the same, nothing will ever be the same. The number of children Felipe has made smile is countless. Three Turks for five pesetas. So a lifetime.
About The Author
