Madrid: A walk from the gate to the sky

By Jose A Sanchez Dafos

Madrid is not a city you visit. It is a city you walk.

This book is one continuous walk in photographs. It begins at the Puerta de Alcal in the first light of morning and ends at night among the towers of the Castellana. In between come the plazas in the rain, the gilded trading hall of the old Bolsa, the streets of the Austrias, the painted walls of the Letras quarter, the new parks along the river, and above all the people. Strangers laughing on benches. A couple stopped in the middle of winter. A guitarist playing beside an Egyptian temple as the afternoon goes gold.

Every page carries a short caption, and the captions read as a single story from the first page to the last. The walk crosses paths with G ngora, whose verses are set into the pavement of the city itself, with Hemingway, who swore that nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night, and with Machado, who called the city the breakwater of all the Spains. A foreword by Diego Anto anzas de Toledo, founder of Madrid and You, opens the book in Spanish and English.

84 photographs taken over seven years. 75 pages in full colour, 8 by 10 inches.

For anyone who loves Madrid, for anyone who misses it, and for anyone still wondering why the old saying goes from Madrid to heaven.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H9BXF6H6
• ISBN13: 9798185604106
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 76 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 8.0" x 10.0"