There was no park in the vicinity but the air still smelled of earth. Just over two kilometers away was La Almudena Cemetery, and he thought the emanations of the dead hovered over the whole city.

Madrid was full of cemeteries. San Isidro, the Parroquial in Carabanchel Bajo, the British Cemetery, beautiful if only for its peculiarities: it had no grass and was overlooked by the backs of dilapidated buildings with a network of clotheslines, on which hung underwear whose various sizes and colors seemed to suggest elderly residents. And then there were the cemeteries that had disappeared, such as the Sacramental de San Martín in Vallehermoso or the Norte in Arapiles (now the site of a branch of El Corte Inglés), where bodies had found their final resting place until the early twentieth century.