There is the luxurious Madrid of the aristocracy and the hidalgo, the Madrid that lives for fashion and pleasure, and there is the Madrid of the shopkeeper and the lower middle class. Beneath these strata are the wage-earners, the mechanics and labourers, a frugal and usually industrious community. There is also the Madrid of a large nondescript class composed of mendicants, thieves, hawkers, and the rabble and derelicts of society.
There is the Madrid of the casinos, some intellectual, others merely social or sporting. The city has its coteries of ardent politicians, military men, financiers, reformers, freethinkers, revolutionaries, and its societies of the scientific, learned, and artistic. There is no specific character which one can point to as typical of Madrid. One passion is, however, manifest throughout all classes--the love of bull-fighting. Seville is the school of the torero; Madrid is the scene of his valour in the arena. The bull-fighter is the idol of the populace. In the cafés of the Puerta del Sol, or in the ring of the Plaza de Toros, his figure is one that arouses the deepest interest and warmest admiration. An eminent jockey in England has his host of admirers, but he cannot command that universal respect which is accorded to the _espada_ in Spain. The great bull-fighter is the pet of Madrid society, the demi-god of the populace, the model of the “sports” of the city.
It is just as easy to lead the studious, contemplative life in Madrid as in London, if one elects to be aloof. On the other hand, there is every opportunity for gaiety, social amenities, and dissipation. Madrid offers almost every kind of life to its inhabitants. Its 540,000 natives, forming Borrow’s “extraordinary vital mass,” are quite as motley as the population of Manchester. Madrid is therefore neither a purely commercial, fashionable, pleasure-seeking, nor cultured centre. Bilbao and Barcelona are the busy marts of Spain; Burgos, Salamanca, and Cordova subsist, as it were, upon the grandeur of the past, and you wonder how the people live. But Madrid throbs with life, and manifests the new ideals and views of the country in the domain of politics, in social reforms, in the arts and sciences, and in the diversions of society. In the realm of thought, the new Spain has its impulse and its centre in Madrid. Barcelona has been called “the life of Spain,” and in the commercial sense this is true. Yet Barcelona boasts of a strong affinity with France, and a great part of its trade is in the hands of foreigners. It is from Madrid that one may expect the impetus of a patriotic, national, and racial advancement, based upon culture and the recognition of the principles of social liberty.