Lately, when I do the Haunted Madrid route, I've decided to slip in a wonderful song by the Andalusian master who calls the capital home. Listening to the song called "A la sombra de un león" ("In the Shadow of a Lion") makes you realize Madrid was born so that Sabina could write about it. We're looking at a spectacular ballad — simple, beautiful, well-written and beautifully sung by Ana Belén and Joaquín.
A song that talks about the chance the city of Madrid offers, since one of the protagonists arrives with practically nothing on his back to see if he can build a better future. As soon as he gets here, he heads to Calle del Carmen, right in the city center, to buy a lottery ticket at Doña Manolita — perhaps the spot in all of Spain where the most luck is handed out. It's a fact: once it's known that Christmas lottery tickets are on sale, long lines start forming for a chance at being the lucky winner of "El Gordo".
After this stop, he probably started walking down Gran Vía to come face-to-face with the statue of the goddess Cibeles. This guy, whose name is never mentioned but who could be any one of us, falls in love with the goddess's posture, her self-assurance, her poise — and decides to ask her (as many of us have done) for a dance, even to let him sleep beside her. Cibeles is the goddess who represents Mother Earth and has always been considered a symbol of fertility since the Greek world. Originally this fountain was placed facing the other important fountain on the Paseo del Prado, Neptuno.
So after asking her for a dance, Cibeles thanks him for making it all the way to her and lets him stay in her arms for the night.
Then it's Joaquín Sabina's turn to sing. So we move from a melodic voice to a slightly more broken one that gives the song a fresh point of view.
A few months seem to have passed since this man "with clown shoes" arrived in Madrid. It turns out someone has escaped from the Ciempozuelos prison — apparently disguised as a nurse, accused of having stolen an engagement ring from El Corte Inglés. Maybe after spending the night beside the goddess, he walked up Calle Alcalá to Calle Preciados and there, possibly on the ground floor, helped himself (without paying) to a gift for his beloved.
According to Joaquín, that ring made it to the finger of the goddess Cibeles, but when the police arrived to arrest him, the ring was no longer there — instead it was on the finger of the policeman's own girlfriend (his future wife). What a heartbreak Cibeles must have felt when she finally thought she'd have someone to love her! Her sadness was so deep that she even tried to break free from her cold marble lips to keep them from taking her beloved away — to keep him there with her always.
Of course, no one could hear her, so, powerless to use her mythological powers, she couldn't stop a few tears from escaping her sad eyes. Since Cibeles sits in the plaza that bears her name, in such a central area of the city, those tears were spotted by a taxi driver who, unable to believe his eyes, must have kept driving up Calle Alcalá while looking back, and finally crashed into the Banco Central — the building that today houses the Instituto Cervantes.
In short, this is a song that tells a story you never quite know was real or not, very much in the style of the songwriter from Jaén. Sabina decides to give Ana Belén this wonderful set of lyrics and she chooses to include it on her 1988 album "A la sombra de un león". Years later, Ana Belén and Joaquín began performing this piece together on the "Mucho más que dos" tour — the moment we get to hear the two voices together.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful and most special performances for the singer-songwriter took place on another tour ("Dos en la carretera", 2001) at the Plaza de Toros de las Ventas in Madrid — just a few months before, he had suffered a mild stroke that pushed him into a terrible depression. In the video of that tour you can see a slightly drawn Sabina, but open to the warmth of the audience. After accompanying Ana Belén on this concert, Sabina stayed away from the spotlight until, the following year, he released his most personal album, called "Alivio de Luto".
Even so, the song deserves to be listened to not once or twice or three times, but more — and with eyes closed, let's imagine we're dancing beside the goddess.
