🎥 The Tapa Weekend: July 7

Amazing music festivals, occult collections and a Dim Sum food festival.

Jul 07, 2023

By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | July 7, 2023 | Madrid | Issue #15

🎉 Welcome to a new issue of The Tapa: Weekend Edition! An English-language newsletter about what to do this weekend in Madrid (plus memes because why the hell not).

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If this is not you this weekend, we’ve got options. (Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash)

With the summer in full swing, the city is teeming with options for those who are fortunate enough to enjoy the arid, asphyxiating evenings that Madrid has to offer. So head over to a nice terraza with a god sunset view, order an Aperol Spritz and read about what you can do this weekend while others are bored to death in places like Ibiza or Málaga.

Here are a few cool things to do this weekend.

1. Mad Cool Festival 2023

The Mad Cool Festival is one of the world's biggest music festivals and is holding its sixth edition this weekend (in fact, it already started yesterday). This year, the lineup includes Robbie Williams, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lil Nas X, The 1975, Lizzo, Sam Smith, The Offspring, Queens of the Stone Age, Sigur Rós, Franz Ferdinand and many others (there’s a total of 53 bands playing and some of those have already played). Need we say more?

The venue, Iberdrola Music, is the largest in Europe powered by renewable energy. And even better news: the metro will run until 4 a.m. so you don’t have to worry about getting home while drunk and tired. Tickets are going fast so make sure you get yours quickly!

Mad Cool Festival. Iberdrola Music. Calle Laguna Dalga con Avenida Real de Pinto, Madrid. Through July 8. Tickets start at €85.

2. The Occult at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum promotes its new temporary exhibit using footage and a soundtrack that look and sound like a scene from The DaVinci Code. Curated by the museum’s artistic director, Guillermo Solana, this exhibit offers visitors almost 60 works from the institution’s permanent collection and the private collections of various members of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family, “which reveal documented traces of the occult.”

So says the museum’s website: “The esoteric tradition provides a series of codes for deciphering hidden meanings. Its value lies in the fact that it reveals details and aspects of works of art that have previously passed unnoticed, offering us new, heterodox readings.” So it’s basically about discovering hidden symbols that refer to demonic presences, astrology, alchemy and many other things related to the occult. (Watch the video above to understand what we mean.)

The Occult. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Paseo del Prado, 8, Madrid. Through September 24. Tickets start at €13.

3. Madrid’s First Ever Dim Sum Festival

This weekend is you chance to enjoy Madrid's first ever Dim Sum festival, in which 12 popular Asian restaurants celebrate the popular bite-sized delicacy. So if you’re looking to experience a culinary journey through Asian gastronomy, this is your chance to do so.

Participating restaurants include Soy Kitchen, El Bund, Tse Yang, Kököchin, Casa Lafu, Mítiko Asian Experience, Maison Umami, Le Macao, Le Macao Príncipe, Lady Macao, Ginza, and Dim Sum Market. They will all be offering a special menu crafted exclusively for this occasion with menus ranging from €22 to €65. The event is organized by Tsingtao beer and Sankou Asian Food, a workshop specializing in crafting the perfect dough for these treats.

Festival del Dim Sum. Multiple Asian restaurants around Madrid (check list above). Ends on July 9. Menus start at €22.

4. Cibeles de Cine 2023

Cibeles de Cine is back, baby! This summer, Madrid's most popular outdoor cinema, featuring a different movie everyday, returns for its eighth edition at the stunning Crystal Gallery of the CentroCentro Cultural Center (located on the same building where City Hall is located, right across from the Cibeles fountain).

Cibeles de Cine offers an incredible lineup of films that mixes the old with the new and the blockbuster with the independent. This summer you get to see iconic films like Casablanca, Gremlins and The Big Lebowsky along with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. Oh, and there will also be an art exhibit featuring exclusive images from Warner Bros' film archive, providing a glimpse into the studio's rich history.

This weekend you’ve got some pretty interesting options: Asteroid City (Friday), The Little Mermaid (Saturday) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (Sunday). Don’t miss them!

Cibeles de Cine. CentroCentro Cultural Center. Plaza Cibeles 1, Madrid. Everyday until September 14. 10 p.m. Tickets start at €6.

5. Una Luz Tímida: A musical

Based on true events, this musical "A Timid Light" (Una Luz Tímida) tells the story of Isabel and Carmen, two teachers who fell in love during the Franco regime in Spain. They both meet in the late 50s at a high school in Barcelona, and immediately fall in love with each other. However, they constantly struggle to find happiness together, as “Carmen must contend with her family's extremely conservative mindset, which, upon discovering the romance, decides to send her to a psychiatric hospital,” viewing homosexuality it as an incurable illness.

África Alonso Bada, in addition to writing the play, takes on the role of Isabel to help Carmen, played by Júlia Jové, overcome the devastating aftermath of her confinement after finally breaking free from the hospital—and even her own family. It’s directed by Marilia Samper.

Una Luz Tímida. Teatro Infanta Isabel, Calle del Barquillo 24, Madrid. Through July 30. Tickets start at €15.30.

👨🏻‍💻 Viral Story of the Week

🫠 “Summer in Spain”

Ah, foreign tourists. What would Spain do without you? This week a British Twitter account named “Travelling Destinations” posted an idyllic photo a a swimming pool and a house by the mountains using the caption “Summer in Spain!”

It did not go well with some of the locals. Mainly because to them summer in Spain is far from paradise and more like hell on earth. Spanish people, being really good at sarcastic Twitter, quickly fired back with some of the wittiest examples of their own “summers in Spain”. Here are some of them. (h/t El Huffpost)

🔔 A Message From Our Sponsor

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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

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