Madrid
From light into darkness: the genius of Goya
The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya was born in Zaragoza in 1746, the son of a gilder whose livelihood was…
Secrets and lies: Berta Isla, by Javier Marías, reviewed
A novel by Javier Marías, as his millions of readers know, is never what it purports to be. Spain’s most…
Franco’s bloody finale
One afternoon in the early 1990s, an elderly gentleman from Alicante told me of the tragedy that had occurred at…
Javier Marías's Thus Bad Begins: A touch of Vertigo in post-Franco Madrid
The title comes from Hamlet but the spirit that hovers over the pages of Javier Marías’s new novel is —…
Portrait of the week
Home Alan Henning, 47, a British volunteer aid worker taken captive in Syria by Islamic State, was murdered, and footage…
The Spanish Civil War hotel that Capa, Hemingway and Gelhorn called home
In February 1924 the Hotel Florida, a ten- storey marble-clad building with 200 rooms, a glass-roofed atrium and red plush…
