Whenever Madrileños ask me what my favorite place in their city is, there’s one that comes to mind first, and I always find myself hesitant to actually say it. My apartment is a thirty-minute walk from Our Lady of Almudena Cemetery (Cementerio de Nuestra Señora de La Almudena), one of the world’s largest cemeteries according to Wikipedia. I’m not sure if that statistic is based on the area or the population of people laid to rest there: there are over five million graves and the labyrinthine necropolis contains at least one bus stop inside of it. I’ve been lost in it on at least three occasions, which says a bit about the size and a bit about my directional skills.
A cemetery is a sort of community center in its own right, reflecting aspects of place and culture. When I visited my first Spanish cemetery in Toledo and saw how there was barely any room between the graves, I thought how I’d hate to be buried so close to other people. (But how much personal space does one really need in the afterlife?) Family members are often buried in the same grave, stacked on top of one another from what I gather from the tombstones. The resting places are less austere than what you see in the United States, and many graves are packed with flowers, photos, or little trinkets. I occasionally see children’s drawings taped to headstones, crayons used to depict families, rainbows, dogs, and a winged abuela or abuelo hovering above the group.
It’s not just what people leave at the gravesites that is markedly different from I’m accustomed to, but the epitaphs often convey intense grief. One of my favorite headstones is for a 16-year-old girl who died in 1934. The simple inscription of “¡¡HIJA!!” feels like a wail and made me teary eyed the first time I saw it. The bottom line, "Contigo se nos fue la ilusion de la vida," translates to something like, “With you has gone our will to live.” “Ilusion” is word I have difficulty with, as it can mean “illusion,” “joy,” “hope,” or “dream.” Amalita’s parents were eventually buried on top of her grave. The left piece of stone on the ground has an inscription that translates, “Here lies mother and father, now companions in the eternal dream of their unforgettable daughter, Amalita.”
Almudena was established in 1884, and some zones within it are neglected and in disrepair. In older sections, tombs have split apart, revealing pitch black gaps beneath that I don’t want to look at too closely. Near the chapel is a section containing only the graves of small children who died in the 1920’s and 30’s, some likely victims of a cholera epidemic. Many of the cherub statues have cracked to pieces or eroded over the last century. The names of some of the children have been totally erased by time, and other headstones have weathered photographs of toddlers lacquered across them. You see the occasional flower or stuffed animal on a grave and wonder if it’s a distant relative or someone who simply wants to pay respects to these kids who no longer have parents alive to remember them.
I’m painting a dreary picture, but it’s a place simultaneously peaceful and electrified with emotion. It’s also the only place in Madrid that is usually devoid of (living) people. That’s another reason I love it. Madrid is a crowded city where you never feel alone, but in Almudena the only eyes on me belong to cats and magpies. And there are stories everywhere you look. Stories you can only imagine and invent using the sparse details you can find, but five million stories nonetheless.
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