🌧️ The Tapa Weekend: January 24
FITUR, a night at the Russian opera, a cool play about Spain and China Fest 2025.
By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | January 24, 2024 | Madrid | Issue #83
🎉 Welcome to a new issue of The Tapa: Weekend Edition! An English-language newsletter about what to do this weekend in Madrid (plus memes!)
🤑 The Tapa offers paid subscriptions, and we’d be deeply thrilled if you purchased one to help build this enterprise we’ve had so much fun creating. And a big THANK YOU to those who already support us!
🇪🇸 If you haven’t subscribed yet, hit that button below so you have some fresh ideas in your inbox every Friday about where to go and what to do.
🫶 And if you have, please share this with your friends!
Here Are 5 Things to Do in Madrid This Weekend
It’s Friday raining again!
Will this month ever end? It feels like January was three months ago. If it’s any consolation, we’re less than two months away from the spring and at least there’s still daylight after 6 p.m. now.
This horrible weather doesn’t really scream “a weekend at the park”, so once again we must come up with a series of indoor options for the everyday person. You know, like the opera.
So grab those rainboots, your coat and your umbrella and head outside for a
wetfun experience, courtesy of this newsletter! (Or stay home watching the sing-along version of Wicked. We don’t care at this point).
Enjoy!
1.✈️ FITUR 2025: Madrid’s international tourism fair
One of the world’s biggest international tourism trade fairs is back this week!
This five-day event brings together tourism professionals, industry trendsetters, and peasants like us, who can explore many destinations around the world without leaving the IFEMA pavilions. We know. It’s not ideal but at least you’re not at home watching random YouTube videos.
The 2025 edition features Brazil as its partner country, so if you ever dreamed of visiting Rio or being chased by jaguars in the deep Amazon jungle, you better not miss FITUR this year.
The fair is considered a global meeting point for tourism professionals and the leading trade fair for inbound and outbound markets in Ibero-America.
And yes, there is food available.
Trust us, this is one of the best options out there this weekend — especially if you want to escape this ugly weather.
FITUR 2025. IFEMA Madrid, Avenida del Partenon 5, Madrid. Through Jan. 26. Check website for opening hours. Tickets: €29 (€22 if you buy online)
2.🎭 A play: Story of a Staircase (Historia de una escalera)
It’s been 75 years since Story of a Staircase premiered at the Teatro Español. And now, Spanish playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo’s classic play returns to the same stage under the direction of Helena Pimenta, with a cast led by Gloria Muñoz.
Never heard of it? That’s alright, we wouldn’t blame you. It’s still worth seeing. After winning the Lope de Vega Prize from the Madrid City Council in 1949, Historia de una escalera became “one of the most essential works in Spanish dramatic literature”. The play, Buero Vallejo’s debut on a professional stage, had its premiere at the Teatro Español that year.
The plot revolves around three key moments in early 20th-century Spain (something you probably don’t know much about), using the setting of a staircase to depict small yet significant events in the lives of three generations of families - ordinary people struggling to survive the challenges of society.
The play jumps from the spring of 1919 to the fall of 1929, and the winter of 1949; 75 years later, the play still resonates with 21st-century Spain, drawing parallels with contemporary society (which may or may not be good).
Story of a Staircase. Teatro Español, Calle del Príncipe 25, Madrid. Through March 30. Check website for schedule. Tickets start at €6.
3.🎤 Discover Madrid’s pop intimate sensation Merino
Merino is the band to see this weekend if you’re looking for a unique blend of indie pop, folk and electronic. Performing at the Circo Price this Sunday as part of the Inverfest series, they will be presenting songs from their latest and second studio album Himnos de Guerra.
The album by the Madrid-based band is both “a tribute and a reinterpretation of Pablo Picasso’s iconic Guernica painting, with each song representing a specific battle, and the cover art for each track depicting one of the figures that will ultimately form its final version of the painting”.
The band was founded by Sandra Merino and Álex Gallego with the goal of “helping people feel and connect emotionally”. Their live performances are worth seeing, offering a mix of immersive visuals, lighting effects, and Sandra’s captivating voice, all set against a backdrop of emotionally charged pop.
Merino’s shows are a perfect combo of intimacy and high energy, captivating their audiences with hypnotic instrumentals and deeply personal storytelling, making each concert a truly immersive journey (we know everything is “immersive” these days, but in this case we mean it).
Merino. Teatro Circo Price, Ronda de Atocha 35, Madrid. Sunday, Jan. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at €20.
4.🍜 China Taste 2025: Getting ready for the Chinese New Year
Drop whatever it is you’re doing because China Taste is back this week for its eighth edition in Madrid.
To celebrate the Chinese New Year and the arrival of the year of the snake 🐍, this pioneering event once again showcases the richness of China’s gastronomy through a series of culinary events featuring renowned Chinese restaurants in Madrid such as Le Chinois, Dim Sum Market, Chi-La, Gran Café Shanghai, China Crown and many (many!) others.
All of these popular restaurants (a total of 17) will offer special menus at great prices throughout the month, ranging between €25 and €90 (and single dishes starting at €7.90). On top of that, for each menu purchased, China Taste donates a portion to the NGO Red Cross.
China has a diverse culinary heritage (in case you didn’t know), represented by eight major regional cuisines: Sichuan, Shandong, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, and Anhui. This is your chance to try them all.
China Taste is organized by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, the China Cultural Center in Madrid, the Madrid City Council, and the Community of Madrid. It’s pretty legit.
China Taste 2025. Multiple locations around Madrid. Through Feb. 16. Check official website for participating venues.
5.🗣️ A weekend at the opera: Eugene Oneguin
If you’re not into Wicked but still enjoy over-the-top drama, there’s always Russian opera, courtesy of some dude called Tchaikovsky who we hear is going places.
Prestigious German theater director Christof Loy is in charge of this adaptation of the classic opera Eugene Oneguin (we call him Eugenio here), returning to the Teatro Real after 15 years to commemorate the 225th anniversary of author Alexander Pushkin’s birth (he’s the guy who wrote the original novel).
In this grand production between Madrid’s Royal Theater, Norwegian Den Norske Opera & Ballett and Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, the audience is transported to 19th-century Russia to experience a moving story of unrequited love and redemption. (What, were you expecting a Disney-esque musical? This is 19th-century Russia for Christ’s sake).
There are reckless aristocrats, hopeless romantic female protagonists, heartbreak, duels and (spoiler alert) someone dying. See? Fun times!
This opera originally opened in Moscow in 1879 (it hit the Bolshoi Theater in 1881) and only premiered for the first time at Madrid’s Royal Theater in 2010. Better late than never, we say.
Eugenio Oneguin. Teatro Real. Plaza de Isabel II s/n, Madrid. Through Feb. 18. Check website for schedule. Tickets start at €18.
👨🏻💻 Viral Stories of the Week
🎨 Look—Picasso signed it just like he signed the Citroën!
We’re nice people, so we don’t normally make fun of people for being ingenuous. Then again, this woman found a print of a Picasso painting and she’s asking if it’s real because the signature matches the signature on a Citroën Picasso. Which is kind funny, right?
🎶 What’s that song?
🔔 A Message From Our Sponsor
Secret Kingdoms is your English bookstore in Madrid. It specializes in Spanish history and literature, contemporary and classic novels, books for children and young adults of all ages, history and historical fiction, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, poetry, biographies and much more.
Located on Calle de Moratín 7 — a few blocks away from the Prado Museum — and with over 20,000 new and used books, Secret Kingdoms has something for everyone.
Find out more at www.thesecretkingdoms.com
🙏 Once again, please remember to share this newsletter with your friends on social media. The more we grow, the more information we’ll be able to offer each week.
We’ll be back next week with more.