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http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Hemingway/s/Madrid/years/after/his/death/elpepueng/20110713elpeng_1/Ten"Yet when you get to know it , it is the most Spanish of all cities, the best to live in, the finest people, month in and month out the finest climate," wrote Ernest Hemingway in Death In The Afternoon . The Nobel Literature Prize winner visited Spain on several occasions, and in the 1920s he was here nine times with his family. During the Civil War, in 1937 and 1938, he returned to Madrid as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance, and was back again in the 1950s, attracted mostly by the bullfights, especially those featuring his friends Luis Miguel Dominguín and Antonio Ordóñez at Las Ventas.
Madrid's streets, parks and buildings were immortalized in his books. In his short story The Denunciation , Hemingway talks about Bar Chicote, on Gran Vía, as a symbol of the affection foreigners felt for Spain. This refuge of stars is also the setting for a scene from his play The Fifth Column . Some of the establishments that Hemingway frequented are still around, like Chicote, but others have met a sad fate.
The Gaylord, one of the most important hotels in Madrid during the war, used to stand on Calle de Alfonso XI. Now there is a residential building in its place. Robert Jordan, the main character in For Whom The Bell Tolls , said it once: "Too good for a city under siege." To mark the 50th anniversary of the writer's death last Saturday, EL PAÍS reviewed some of the establishments from Hemingway's era:
- Restaurante Botín. (Cuchilleros, 17). Carlos González, the current owner of the oldest restaurant in the capital, asserts that Hemingway used to love roast suckling pig. The writer was a regular at Botín and a good friend of Emilio, Carlos' grandfather and the former owner. One day, Hemingway asked Emilio to teach him how to make paella, but after several failed attempts the author of The Old Man and the Sea declared: "I'd better stick to writing." The Sun Also Rises , the novel that made him world famous, ends with a scene in this restaurant.
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