...and Victoria Beckham claimed it just smelt of garlic!

THE flowers are blooming and the terrazas are peppered with tables and tourists. Soon every corner will resemble a sugary shanty town as blue-and-white ice cream kiosks crop up out of nowhere to offer relief from the summer heat.

Even though these visuals are an excellent addition to Madrid’s already lively streets, I always find that it’s my nose that picks up on the arrival of the summer before anything else.
 
Madrid in the summer smells of sun and olive oil and sweat and cigarettes and too much cologne. It sounds horrible, but somehow... it isn’t.

When they wash down the streets at night, it makes the normally bone-dry air humid and earthworm-y, if only for half an hour.

In the morning, it all starts again. The hot air carries the scent of housewives frying potatoes and mixes it with the cars’ exhaust from the morning rush hour.

The smells of Madrid are so unique – of desert and city, of food and machinery – and this entire olfactory overload gets mixed up in your psyche, clinging to your memories.

I may forget the details of an ordinary afternoon spent with friends, but I’ll still have the scent of the grass in Retiro. It will make me lose my breath for a second and feel a twinge of... what, exactly? Nostalgia? Disgust? Delight? It’s like Proust’s madeleine, except replace the wimpy biscuit with a pincho de tortilla or a clean-shaven guy on the Metro.

But each scent – the faint mustiness of the cool stone walls in the Reina Sofia, curry and pipe tobacco in Lavapiés – stays with me in a way that photos can’t.

Long after the albums are tucked away, no matter where I’m living, a strong whiff of café con leche will wake me up and bring me back to the summers I’ve spent here, if only for an instant.

photos by Flickr contributors bitterroot and St0rmz

The writer, Kristen Bernardi, is a blogger with Expatica Spain and contributes to a fortnightly blog on alternate Fridays. If you would like to share your experiences of living abroad and blog with Expatica too, please send an email to Spain@expatica.com