Sam's Travel Memories: #2 - Surviving Madrid!

On a warm mid-July evening back in 2012, I was in Madrid, Spain for an International Convocation with my church, the CEC (Charismatic Episcopal Church). This was the second night of the convocation and the night service had just let out so, some of the youth group invited me to go out with them for dinner.

The original group was going to be much larger than the group I ended-up setting out with. The larger group of youth were taking too long so we told them to meet-up with us later. So, I set off with 5 others, a guy from Paris, France, two girls from Bonn, Germany another girl from Orlando, USA and one girl from Madrid, Spain who was our local guide for the night.

To be honest, I had NO idea where we were going, I just knew that food would be involved at some point soon. Even though, I was not even really that hungry, I was just eager to hangout with my new friends.

Once we got to the Goya Metro Station, the closest station to the hotel we were at (Hotel Convencion) I was filled-in on the fact that we were taking the Metro (Subway) to the the Sol Metro Station as the place we were going to eat at was near the Puerta Del Sol Plaza (location of City Hall). Now we had, as an entire youth group as well, as some of the clergy and non-clergy adults took the same trip earlier in the day for a multinational Pro-Life rally organized by our church. I eventually found out that the reason we did that rally during mid-day in the Madrid heat was because our leadership was told that there was going to be another rally in the evening which we should avoid. This information was conveniently not passed on to any of the youth to tell us to avoid that area later on.

The Metro ride was boringly uneventful and we were happy to have reached our terminating station. We made our way through the large underground plaza before exiting up onto the Puerta Del Sol Plaza. Once we got out the exit, I knew things were off kilter... really off. To the right of the exit there was some riot police in gear guiding their vans into a parking area at the edge of the plaza. The plaza was packed with people, not uncommon considering the Spanish night culture and there was obviously a large protest going on in the middle of the plaza. My friends and I made a Conga Train (myself at the back) as we made our way through the less densely packed outer edges of the Plaza past smaller circles of protesters and pot-smoking hippies.

As we made out way through, I told my friends, though I am not sure they heard me, “Something is happening that should not be happening.” I knew in my Spirit that things were not as peacefully loud as it may have seemed. For the first time in my life I fully understood the term, “You can cut the tension with a knife.” I could physically feel the tension in the air. Then part way through the plaza, I looked to my right at the mass of backs as the people faced city hall, then my mind flashed to a thoughtful vision, “What if these people turned on us?” Thinking in terms of a stampede away from the direction of City Hall, not to attack us directly.

Needless to say, my vision came true no more than 30 seconds later as a loud BOOM to our right caused a deafening silence to fall over the plaza. Then as people in the center, who I could not really see, began to turn and run the rippled reaction outward of the crowd was swift. To our horror we were facing a stampede of about a thousand souls rushing towards us.

My group, at least I thought at the time, turned to the left and ran from the crowd. I could have sworn I saw our local guide run in-front of me, something that was not the case. However it is a good thing I did think that, because it caused me to noticed the girl from Orlando. I recognized her dark blue cardigan flash in front of me as I was running to get next to the nearest wall in an effort to avoid being trampled. I was able to grab my friend's arm and we made it to the wall.

Once we got to the wall we were able to stop but, only for a second. Though many people were still running, some had started to fight back against the police by throwing rocks and beer cans at them. The loud cannon like booms that seemed to have triggered the stampede in the first place were still ringing strong. Police had started shooting teargas and other crowd dispersents into the crowd. It felt like we were sitting ducks at the wall so we turned the corner down a side street and ended up running into an El Corte Ingles department store. The store's security rushed to the doors to stop the rioters from coming in however, we were able to duck under some clothing racks near the entrance to get into the store past the guards.

Once in the store, I realized that my friend had gotten hurt. Twice her foot got stepped on leaving her big toe bleeding with the nail barely holding on. NO ONE in store spoke English! I thought, “We are on the sales floor of a major department store, in a major tourist district, in a major European city and no one speaks English.” Wow! I found out that when it comes to finding English speakers in Spain, one will find that it is not very common compared to the number of English speakers in say France, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, etc,. So, we had no way to ask what was going on with the riots and we were only really assisted when my friend showed her bleeding toe. While the lady was willing to help, my friend was too afraid to have anyone touch it and we made our way out of the store, which was soon to close anyway.

Now, were were not dumb enough to exit the same way we came in. While we had no idea where exactly we were, we certainly were NOT going to head back to the Plaza. Even though that was the location of the only metro station we knew of. Afterwards, looking at a map I found that we were not far from Sol Metro Station at all. But, the thought of accidentally getting pushed onto the tracks by crazy rioters crossed both our minds.

Anyway, once out of the store we found some people who spoke English. However, they were college-age South African tourists who were as clueless of the day's events as we were. They offered to show us the video that they had taken but, after already being an extra in the production I was not really interested in seeing it.

Finally a local lady with a stroller over heard us and came up. She pushed a stroller in one hand and held Kindle device in the other. She, could not tell us how to get “home” (as we refereed to our hotel) but, she told us that we needed to get back to our hotel/home as it was not safe right now. Her advice offered us little comfort to say the least.

We decided to try and find a taxi as the lady let us know that Sol was the only Metro Station around. We start walking down the street directly in front of the door we used to get out of the department store. As we walked, we came upon two ladies sitting on a bench resting and they had the familiar protest signs next to them. The white signs were like “No Smoking” signs but with a pair of black scissors instead of a cigarette. Asking them for insight as to the cause of all this madness, they in broken English said that it was because the government was going to cut Miner's Benefits and the signs meant “No Cuts!”

Ever since we left the store, the side we exited on was strangely quiet, too quiet. As were were finishing up our nice conversation with the friendly locals, the booms started again and the crowd that had been on the other side of the store poured through the alleyway towards us... again! DE JA VU!!!

Ladies told us to run and we hesitated not! We ran a little further down the street we were already on and decided to take cover in an underground parking garage. Now, while I was going to take the steps like a normal person, my scared friend jumped a small retaining wall and ran down the exit ramp. I followed, though I simply turn back slightly ran down the ramp, her jump was actually unnecessary. So, despite the obvious dangers of running down a blind cruved exit ramp, we were both in this together at this point. Thank GOD that there were no cars coming though 30 seconds later, there would have been as one was paying and ready to exit.

Everyone there was surprised to see a couple crazy English speakers show up via an exit ramp for cars only. I let my now sobbing friend do the explaining, actually I had no choice. The lady who was in the car that was getting ready to exit was a God send and decided to help. Though she could not speak good English she had school aged daughters who were learning English. She pulled to the side and asked the garage attendants to phone our hotel. As I should have remembered from the night before, the number on our hotel key-card was not even an active number. The lady then said, get in the car I will try to take you to your hotel. Though both my friend and I had been told, “NEVER GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGER!” we felt it was our best option. She really had no idea where our hotel was as she lived on another side of the city but, was willing to help us anyway. In the end she took us to a line of taxis and after much thanks we got out and took a taxi back to our hotel.

While in the taxi, we passed a line of ambulances loading up injured people. Some were bloodied with torn-up clothing. Needless to say, we were worried about our friends. While we had not forgotten them we had previously been very preoccupied and after seeing the ambulances we feared the worst.

Once we got to the hotel I started to get money out to cover the ride but, my friend beat me to by practically throwing the money at the driver telling him thanks and that he could keep the change. We were so glad to get back to the hotel, only to find that none of the other youth had even left yet. We walked up just as they were departing and warned them not to go and asked that they phone our friends.

 

After telling the whole incident multiple times over that still young night we finally went out to eat with an American friend to a pizza place across the street. Oddly enough, as it turned-out, my friend was looking for her parents who we passed twice at an out-door table on the way to and from the pizza place. Her mom was nurse and my friend wanted her to take care of her foot but, she ended up letting the waiter at the restaurant bandage her toe right there as we waited for our pizza. He sure earned his tip!

So, to finish the story, we did not see any of our friends until the next morning at the last day of the convocation. As it turns out, they simply huddled together while the crowd ran around them. After the one guy got hit by a police club they said they were really tourists and were allowed behind police lines. They got some ice-cream and headed to their respective dwellings 30 minutes later when the Sol Metro Station was re-opened.

I did not go back to my room until after my friend was reunited with her parents at the table we past twice. My mom was relived to finally see me as apparently she had been watching the riots on TV. While this whole incident left my mind a little jumpy at crowds for a while I have since gotten over it and have moved on to new adventures. While I hope that I never have to live through such an incident again, I would NEVER give up this experience. I look back and laugh at it and think, “Wow! That was actually kind of fun!” :D