Living in Paris is a state of mind. Every day is a mix of beauty, stress, good food, arrogance, traffic jams, films noir and the ever-flirting Frenchmen. It does something to the soul. The whole nerve system, I have discovered, is on chronic alert. Because the city, on the one hand so generous, is on the other hand so exhausting, so omnivorous. Coming from this setting to Madrid, I realized how the Spanish capital made me change mode. How I suddenly relaxed, how I let down my guard, how it was easy and uncomplicated to interact with other people. 

In Madrid everybody seems to have enough time. It’s among the fastest growing cities in Europe, as my colleague David tells me, and yet the Madrileños are so unstressed. They have the time to be kind and even the time to make fun - very unusual for somebody used to grumbling Parisians.

The whole city exudes a human surplus. From the guy dressed up as a devil who scared the hell out of me, when he jumped from a house and landed just in front of me with his black eyes and pointed ears, to the waiter at the trendy restaurant, La Musa Latina, who took out 15 minutes of his life on a fully booked evening to explain the whole philosophy of the Spanish kitchen.

I don’t normally believe in sociological generalizations, and it would be too easy to state that all Madrileños are happy. Of course not, but it struck me how the Spanish are optimistic, planning for the future. How they have wishes, ideas and visions, while the French, for the time being, are stuck in a national malaise and nostalgia, still longing for the past. 

A guidebook, a cleverer one, suggests that the Spanish are still celebrating democracy. That the death of Franco and his fascist dictatorship 33 years ago set off an explosion of creativity and cultural innovation that has lasted ever since.

I don’t know if this is the explanation, the famous movida. But I know that the rhythm of Madrid is so welcoming that I could easily settle here. The lazy waking up, the long afternoons in the shadow of the plane trees, the tapas, the night life and the women’s right to have broad hips. The hot chocolate in the morning, the experimental architecture popping up all over, and the continuing offer of a quick catholic confession with a mild old monk to forgive most human errors.

I came back from there and knew that Madrid just had to be among our highlighted momondo cities in the future. It’s unfair that sparkling Barcelona gets all the publicity because this city really deserves a visit. Or maybe even a longer stay…