The Garden of the Angel closes its doors
The **barrio de las Letras in Madrid** dressed its intersections with cafes that gave off the smell of tobacco and moldy wood, with grocery stores where the old Roman scales were still kept to weigh vegetables, with bookstores where the floor creaked at every step , with flowery balconies from where the usual neighbors greeted each other from one side of the street to the other. But these words already sound like echoes of a past that never seemed to happen.
Scanning the streets surrounding Huertas, we now discover that the cafes have been replaced by souvenir shops, fast food restaurants and tourist flats that have fallen into the hands of real estate agents.
But the Garden of the Angel seemed to have been anchored in time, undaunted and immutable. to the transformation that the consumer society and globalization have forced us to assume. And that has been the case until we have come crashing down on its closure.
The centennial flower shop El Jardín del Ángel closes
A CENTENARY WHO SURVIVED THE WAR
That flower shop seemed almost the garden that a great highborn lady of the 19th century order to build to delight in the fragrances of exotic flowers brought from other worlds. might well have resembled to the laboratory of a botanist or to retreat place of a monarch.
But no, the Garden of the Angel was simply a flower shop that was built back in 1889 on top of what was the cemetery of the church of San Sebastián . This cemetery was located there for more than three centuries until Carlos III decided to remove all the cemeteries from the center of Madrid . There were the remains of Juan de Villanueva, Ventura Rodríguez and Lope de Vega himself , which is why it was known as the “artists cemetery”.
The cemetery land was leased at the time by the church to the Martin family , the architect of this business that was able to survive the Civil War, so bloody in Madrid. In fact, on November 20, 1936, ** a bomb fell at the back of the Church, blowing up the entire front of the flower shop**.
The premises were rebuilt and the flower business continued its journey through the 20th century, going through several owners until the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Its last tenants took up the challenge in 2009, a dream that was cut short with the imminent closure earlier this month.
The reason for the closure of this emblematic place in the city is a bit up in the air. The last tenants already had very tense relations with the current landlord, who turns out to be the priest of the Church of San Sebastian.
We didn't have time to find Ana in the nursery to ask, but the people in charge of the flower shop had already told us that the priest was not willing to help them in the tasks of rehabilitation and reform of a flower shop that was beginning to fall apart.
Indeed, after going to the church and receiving an interview refusal, the parish priest limits himself to saying that the land belongs to the archbishopric of Madrid and that it is there where we have to request information.
From the press office of the archbishopric they make it clear: “ The land is owned by the Church and has been leased to others . We believe that it will also be a flower shop that will be kept there but they still have to rehabilitate it ”. To a certain extent we are comforted, but is it that easy?
AN OUTRAGED NEIGHBORHOOD
The Garden of the Angel is already completely dismantled . Some workers take pains to remove the tiles from the greenhouse and when we ask them almost loudly what exactly they do, they make the situation clear: “You have to dismantle everything”.
We cannot pass, there is nothing left of what was. stands next to me doña Isabel, 89 years old and a resident of the Huertas neighborhood for more than half a century. “My sister's husband worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they sent flowers from the Garden there every day. What they have done with the florist has no name, well yes: Don Pedro Pablo Colino, the priest ”.
Doña Isabel married in the fifties she wore a bouquet from the Garden of the Angel . She tells it emotionally, with her eyes full of a yesterday that is falling apart today. "They don't tell. but they have raised the rent and they cannot pay it . That cannot be done, and even less if it is the church that rents”, narrates an indignant Isabel.
The feeling of the neighbors of the neighborhood is similar . They stop and comment at the newsstand at Puerta del Ángel or at the tobacconist's door: "What they are looking for is to make money," says Mr. Alfredo, an indignant resident of Calle San Sebastián and a bookseller, who his 78 years walks the dog in front of the destroyed flower shop.
A flower shop that is already part of history, because rents are now part of the creed of speculation, a prayer to which the Church itself has also entrusted itself. It was built on a graveyard and it will become a graveyard.
Church of San Sebastián in the neighborhood of Las Letras