The bad thing about going to Spain in the spring to see bullfights is the rain.
It may rain everywhere you go, especially in May and June, and that is why I prefer the summer months.
It rains then too, sometimes, but never yet have I seen it snow in Spain in July and August
although it snowed in August of 1929 in some of the mountain summer resorts of Aragon and in
Madrid it snowed one year on May 15th and was so cold they called off the bullfights.
I remember having gone down that year to Spain thinking spring would be well along,
and all day on the train we rode through country as bare and cold as the badlands in November.
I could hardly recognize the country as the same I knew in the summer and when I got off the train at night
in Madrid snow was blowing outside the station.
I had no overcoat and stayed in my room writing in bed or in the nearest caf'e drinking coffee and Domecq brandy.
It was too cold to go out for three days and then came lovely spring weather.
Madrid is a mountain city with a mountain climate.
It has the high cloudless Spanish sky that makes the Italian sky seem sentimental and it has air that is actively pleasurable to breathe.
The heat and the cold come and go quickly there.
I have watched, on a July night when I could not sleep, the beggars burning newspapers in the street and crouching around the fire to keep warm.
Two nights later it was too hot to sleep until the coolness that comes just before morning
