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The real centre of the San Isidro fiestas
is not the Plaza Mayor or the city centre, but on the other
side of the scruffy River Manzanares, over either the Puente
de Toledo or Puente de Segovia. Here is the pradera
de San Isidro, Saint Isidore's meadow, famous because
of Goya's painting.
The pradera de San Isidro was long a popular excursion
for the people of Madrid and is now a park surrounded by houses.
In one corner of the park sits a large, almost jolly bust
of
Goya - children clamber over it. And here, at the end
of a long avenue, is the ermita, hermitage, a rather
attractive, early eighteenth-century chapel (the cemetery
behind which is worth a visit in itself), where people queue
to take the holy water from a spring (one of Saint Isidore's
miracles involved the smiting of a rock and water emanating
therefrom).
 Of
course, this romeria, pilgrimage, attracts stallholders
selling hippy-style craftwork, pirate CDs, traditional rosquillas,
anise-flavoured doughnuts, hot chocolate, fierce pickles from
earthenware jars and other food and drink, including gallinejas
and entresijos, fried bits of lamb's intestines,
which I find repulsive though my wife loves them and the smell
of which can be overpowering if the wind drifts the wrong
way. Stalls with prize draws have amplification systems the
Rolling Stones would be 
proud of. Surrounded by fairground rides, on the top of the
hill, a verbena is set up, this being an open-air dance
area where different orquestas, dance bands, will play
until well past midnight. It is all very high-spirited and
innocent and it is easy to imagine Mr. Goya looking on with
approval.
Madrid's Saint Isidore is not to be confused with
Saint Isidore of Seville, new patron saint of the Internet.
In fact, there are no fewer than thirteen Saint Isidores listed
by
catholic-forum.com. Madrid's patron saint is
Saint Isidore the Farmer, husband to another saint, Maria
de la Cabeza (if I am not mistaken, they are the only saintly
couple apart from Joseph and Mary). In the eleventh century,
Isidore the Farmer tilled land on the banks of the rather
ridiculous River Manzanares. He was a fairly standard saint,
feeding the poor, persuading angels to work his land while
he was at church, incorrupt corpse, that kind of thing. There
is an attractive new museum dedicated to him in the Plaza
San Andrés, where you can see a stone well, the site of one
of his miracles, even less substantiated than the others,
but the subject of a good story. The tale is that Isidore
and María's young child fell down the well, but when they
fell to weeping and praying, the water surged miraculously
up, bearing the infant with it. It is hard to beat a hagiographer
for entertaining fiction.
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