A Tour of Hemingway's Madrid

The New York Times travels to Spain's capital to see if Hemingway's ghost can still be found.

From the piece...

I was instead following the tracks of that American writer, Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway is associated with a handful of places around the planet — most notably Paris, Pamplona, Havana, Key West and Ketchum, Idaho, where he took his own life in July 1961. But none may have held a warmer spot in his heart than Madrid, which he called “the most Spanish of all cities,” referring to its diverse population from every region of the country. He also titled a short story based in Madrid “The Capital of the World.”

“Don Ernesto,” as he was known to the Spanish, spent enough time in Madrid — he was there for chunks of the late 1920s, late 1930s, and parts of the 1950s, with his last visit in 1960 — that he left a distinct, mostly booze-stained trail. With the exception of the revamped Matadero, the modern version of Hemingway’s Madrid is an old-school itinerary of bars, bullfighting arenas and restaurants. So in advance of the 50th anniversary of his death, I set out to experience all that drew Hemingway back again and again to the city.

After starting my tour at the Matadero, I met up with my wife, Jessie Sholl, in front of our hotel, the Tryp Gran Vía, one of the spots where Hemingway stayed (the second-floor breakfast room, named for the writer, displays photos of him in various acts of masculinity like firing a gun or pulling in a huge fish from a boat).

From there we headed down the Gran Vía, a wide boulevard Hemingway described as Madrid’s answer to Broadway and Fifth Avenue combined, passing by Museo Chicote, a cocktail bar he frequented in the 1930s, when it was popular with international journalists. We then zigzagged through the streets around Puerta del Sol, many recently made pedestrians-only, crossing narrow Calle Victoria, where Hemingway often purchased scalped bullfighting tickets. We walked through leafy Plaza Santa Ana, home to Cerveceria Alemana, a 1904 beer hall that was such a favorite of Hemingway’s that he had his own table (just to the right of the entrance, the only marble-topped table overlooking a window).