Easy Ads

Having forsaken Dubai for Madrid last summer, I was quite hopeful that I would never see another tower crane or live next to a building site ever again. Well, I was wrong. Just out of sight of Plaza de Chueca, but not out of earshot, we have three major building sites. The noisiest is the reconstruction of Mercado San Martín (St Martin's Market), where for the last two months they have been pile-driving. They seem to have finished that (very noisy operation) recently, and are now quietly throwing up steel columns and beams. In the Plaza itself, there's a couple of buildings having their facades fixed.

In the last few days, scaffolding has been erected around the building that has the wonderful Taverna de Angel Sierra pub on its ground floor. I was a bit surprised yesterday morning to see floodlights being mounted at the top of the scaffolding - were they planning to work in the dark? But returning from a night out at the writer's group, we saw the reason for the floodlights.



Yes, to illuminate a chuffing enormous advert for EasyJet. I think that building sites involving scaffolding have to be surrounded by netting to stop stray bits of debris from falling to the ground and injuring people. And the EasyNet certainly looks more capable of doing the job than the ancient green stuff on the building next door but one. But it's intrusive and not pretty, and I hope it doesn't stay up too long.



I can't translate the words exactly, but I think means something like: stop imagining everyone neckid - go see.

Our square is a trendy little place, by the way, and frequently gets used as a backdrop for filming ads and music videos. The fruit and veg shop has been used for something - an advert or a feature film - that required a film crew the size of a Premier League football squad, using proper movie cameras rather than vidjo. On Valentine's Day this year, Ryanair staged a stunt involving hundreds of people having a group snog.



All very interesting.