A little after 3pm on weekday afternoon, the footsteps and voices that echoed along the hallowed halls of the Prado were silenced by a series of percussive detonations that could have been mistaken for an indoor fireworks display. The source of the disruption, however, was not a vandal or a protester. Watched over by the eight muses for whom the Madrid museum’s Sala de las Musas is named, a tall, famous and angular flamenco dancer called El Yiyo was clicking, clapping, stomping and pirouetting before a rapt, grateful and slightly bemused audience.
A few feet away sat the renowned guitarist Rafael Andújar, who had ambled into the sala a few moments earlier, taken his seat and begun to fill the air with notes. When El Yiyo finished his performance to loud applause 10 minutes later, he had hardly broken a sweat – which was very much the idea as the concert was part of an initiative that aimed to coax both visitors and madrileños into air-conditioned cultural venues during the sweltering afternoons of July and August. With summer temperatures that can reach 41C (106C), the streets of the Spanish capital are not a pleasant place to be during the hottest hours of the day.
The new programme, called Refúgiate en la cultura (Take Shelter in Culture), offers free flamenco shows – in the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museums, and the Royal Collections Gallery – as well as free comic monologues in libraries and discounted cinema tickets for screenings .
