Every time I went to the Retiro Pond with my camera, I would run into that man.
He was almost always sitting on the same bench.
Some days he’d read the newspaper with complete concentration. Other days he’d just sit there watching the park, as if time passed differently by the water.
We never spoke.
I don’t even know his name.
A bench, a newspaper, and a routine
As time went on, he stopped being a stranger.
Without realizing it, I began to look for him every time I arrived at the Retiro. If he were there, everything would be in its right place. It was one of those little scenes that are part of city life and that almost no one remembers when they think of Madrid.
I imagine he lived near the park. He had the privilege of making that bench an extension of his home. While many people hurried through the Retiro, he seemed to enjoy something much simpler: reading the newspaper outdoors or quietly watching life unfold around him.
He never sought to draw attention to himself.
That’s precisely why he caught my eye.
Painting what others overlook
I’ve always felt a special attraction to those everyday moments that seem unimportant.
They aren’t major events. They don’t appear in travel guides. Yet when they disappear, we realize that they, too, are part of a city’s memory.
That’s why I ended up painting him twice.
I wasn’t trying to paint a portrait of a specific person. I wanted to preserve a scene that, for a long time, was part of my walks through the Retiro.
In one watercolor, he appears engrossed in reading his newspaper.
In the other, he is no longer reading. He simply sits on the same bench, watching people pass by with the calm of someone in no hurry.
Both images depict the same person, but they also speak to something else: those small daily rituals that, without our realizing it, become part of our own lives.
The Day I Ran Into Him Again
During the lockdown, I thought about him many times.
While the Retiro remained closed and the streets were empty, I wondered what had become of that man who read the newspaper on the same bench time and time again. I had never spoken to him. I didn’t even know his name. Yet his absence made me realize just how much he had become a part of my walks through the park.
When we were finally able to go out again, one of the first things I did was go to the Retiro with my camera.
And there he was.
With the newspaper in his hands.
I felt a joy that’s hard to explain. Not because we knew each other, but because, in some way, that scene meant that life was also beginning to find its place again.
I don’t know what became of him.
These two watercolors are part of my series Portraits and Scenes of Madrid in Watercolor, a collection of works inspired by the small, everyday gestures that also shape the city’s identity.