When we arrived in Madrid we started building the Jaga booth at the Climatizacion fair. Felt good to do some ‘manual work’ again, especially with this very good team. The next couple of days we would make a small promotional tour with the truck in Madrid and arrange some new documents for Magda since she didn’t have all necessairy papers anymore after the robbery in Barcelona.
We stayed at the Hotel GrandPrix in Alcobendas. This congregation is 12km North of the capital and has 107.500 inhabitants. Besides the shoppingcenter and the cinemacomplex it has nothing special. But…. Penelope Cruz was born in this city! After the Oscars there were suddenly numorous camera crews in the congregation, because Penelope’s mother still lives here and owns a hairdresser’s saloon (pelloqueria). The El Pais, the biggest Spanish newspaper, reported in an advertisment that the inhabitants of the small town are very proud of Penelope. Funny to be a part of all this commotion.
Finally, after a few days of hard work, we had one day off to go sightseeing in Madrid. The city is nice, very big and cosmopolitic, but it misses Barcelona’s energy. But it might also have been our energy that was lacking …
Meanwhile the fair was going very well. The new radiators with very modern design that are also very sustainable and/or cradle to cradle, in combination with the special booth, make the Jaga place a popular hang out for visitors, but also Spanish press to air from. Yesterday, they made a special item just about our booth for Spanish National TV. The entire stand is made of waste-wood from our Jaga factory, which has been saved over time to create something new from. Cradle-to-cradle. This afternoon we will go to Milan, 1400 km ahead!
ABOUT THE CITY
Spain’s history in the 20th century
During World War II, Spanish nationalist forces led by general Francisco Franco, emerged victoriously with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. However, Spain still remained neutral in the Second World War, though sympathetic to the Axis, under the regime of Franco.
After World War II, Spain was politically and economically isolated, and was kept out of the United Nations until 1955, when due to the Cold War it became strategically important in order to protect Southern Europe. In the 1960s, Spain registered an unprecedented economic growth in what was called the ‘Spanish miracle’, which rapidly resumed the long interrupted transition towards a modern industrial economy with a thriving tourism sector and a high degree of human development.
A few years after the death of Franco (1975), democracy was restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately, the government of Spain had been involved in the conflict with the separatist organization ETA ("Basque Homeland and Freedom"), The ETA, founded in 1959 as an opposition to Franco, was dedicated to promoting Basque independence through violent means. They caused over 800 deaths in the past and consider themselves a guerrilla organization. The current nationalist-led Basque Autonomous government does not endorse ETA's nationalist violence.
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. While Madrid possesses a modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighborhoods and streets. During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, especially during the 1960s, the South of Madrid became very industrialize, and there were massive migrations from rural areas of Spain into the city. Madrid's South-Eastern periphery became an extensive working class settlement, which was the base of an active cultural and political reform.
Benefiting from increasing prosperity in the 1980s and 1990s, the capital city of Spain has consolidated its position as an important economic, cultural, industrial, educational, and technological centre on the European continent.