El oso y el madroño

 (El oso y el madroño= The bear and the strawberry tree)

More little slices of life here. Not long after we arrived, we hopped on the Metro and went up to Puerta del Sol. Sol is quite literally the center of the city and of all Spain; since the 1700s the major arterial roads in Spain were established with Sol as their origin. In 1857, Sol was officially established as "Kilometer Zero" (kilómetro cero) of the Spanish road network, and today there is a commemorative plaque marking the exact spot:

In the middle of Sol is a famous statue, "The Bear and the Strawberry Tree" (El Oso y el Madroño). Now wait: I can hear all of you who as young children toiled, stooped and backs bent, under a blazing sun in sweltering summer heat digging among low-growing viney bushes because your parents thought it would be "fun" (and maybe even "do you good") to go to the "U-Pick Strawberries" place. You're itching decades-old red ant bites and disclaiming loudly, "strawberries don't grow on trees!"¹ 

Ah, but this is the the madroño tree (arbutus unedo), otherwise known as the European strawberry tree, because its fruits when ripe resemble strawberries. Somewhat disappointingly, the actual madroños themselves supposedly don't taste very good -- slightly sweet and somewhat gritty -- and are only really used for making jam and liqueurs. But I guess bears like them.

More importantly -- and more to the point -- the bear-eating-from-the-madroño is the official symbol of Madrid, rather than something seemingly more grandiose, like a skeleton on a castle², an angel holding a giant flaming sword³, or a raven-flanked ship, ⁴ but the story behind it is interesting (at least to a history nerd like me):

A bear has been on Madrid's coat of arms since the early 13th century.⁵  Sometime around then, there was a dispute between the city and the church over forests and grazing lands. The king granted the church (¡Qué sorpresa!) control of the prime grazing lands and pastures, and gave the city the forests. After that, the Madrid bear was then depicted as eating out of a tree to commemorate (commiserate?) the division. 

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¹ ...or maybe you're generous of spirit and charitable of disposition rather than being a quibbling pedant like me, and you just let that one slide by. If so, good for you. 😊 ↩︎

² Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland ↩︎

³ Kyiv, Ukraine ↩︎

⁴ Lisbon, Portugal ↩︎

⁵ The reason for that is a mystery I haven't been able to unravel. It's not like Madrid is surrounded by wintry forests that are fantastic bear habitat. ↩︎