The stereotypical picture of Romantic Spain, with its bullfighters and flamenco, cigar-girls and bandidos, was largely the work of a small group of nineteenth-century travellers and writers including Richard Ford, Theophile Gautier, and Prosper Mérimée (the creator of Carmen). The most eccentric of them was George Borrow, who spent years in Spain as an agent for the Bible Society, a job which left him plenty of free time and gave him the excuse to visit places ordinary travellers would not venture. It is almost impossible to dislike Borrow, who is occasionally irritating in his prejudices, but is almost always good-humoured, a talented linguist (though his Spanish vocabulary is often no better than an approximation) and an eager conversationalist, with a natural sympathy for those on the edges of society (and a distaste for those in power). And sometimes he could be so insightful that although his Spanish experiences were nearly two hundred years ago, his accounts are almost as true today. Here he is cheerfully going on about Madrid, and anyone who has caught the Madrid bug will recognise his conclusion: that what is fascinating about the place is not the city itself, but its people.

From Chapter XII of George Borrow's The Bible in Spain (1843):

"I have visited most of the principal capitals of the world, but upon the whole none has ever so interested me as this city of Madrid, in which I now found myself.  I will not dwell upon its streets, its edifices, its public squares, its fountains, though some of these are remarkable enough:  but Petersburg has finer streets, Paris and Edinburgh more stately edifices, London far nobler squares, whilst Shiraz can boast of more costly fountains, though not cooler waters.  But the population!  Within a mud wall, scarcely one league and a half in circuit, are contained two hundred thousand human beings, certainly forming the most extraordinary vital mass to be found in the entire world; and be it always remembered that this mass is strictly Spanish.  The population of Constantinople is extraordinary enough, but to form it twenty nations have contributed; Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Poles, Jews, the latter, by the by, of Spanish origin, and speaking amongst themselves the old Spanish language; but the huge population of Madrid, with the exception of a sprinkling of foreigners, chiefly French tailors, glove-makers and peruquiers, is strictly Spanish, though a considerable portion are not natives of the place.  Here are no colonies of Germans, as at Saint Petersburg; no English factories, as at Lisbon; no multitudes of insolent Yankees lounging through the streets as at the Havannah, with an air which seems to say, the land is our own whenever we choose to take it; but a population which, however strange and wild, and composed of various elements, is Spanish, and will remain so as long as the city itself shall exist. Hail, ye aguadores¹ of Asturia! who, in your dress of coarse duffel and leathern skull- caps, are seen seated in hundreds by the fountain sides, upon your empty water-casks, or staggering with them filled to the topmost stories of lofty houses.  Hail, ye caleseros² of Valencia! who, lolling lazily against your vehicles, rasp tobacco for your paper cigars whilst waiting for a fare.  Hail to you, beggars of La Mancha! men and women, who, wrapped in coarse blankets, demand charity indifferently at the gate of the palace or the prison. Hail to you, valets from the mountains, mayordomos and secretaries from Biscay and Guipuscoa, toreros from Andalusia, riposteros³ from Galicia, shopkeepers from Catalonia!  Hail to ye, Castilians, Estremenians and Aragonese, of whatever calling!  And lastly, genuine sons of the capital, rabble of Madrid, ye twenty thousand manolos,⁴ whose terrible knifes, on the second morning of May, worked such grim havoc amongst the legions of Murat!

And the higher orders--the ladies and gentlemen, the cavaliers and senoras; shall I pass them by in silence?  The truth is I have little to say about them; I mingled but little in their society, and what I saw of them by no means tended to exalt them in my imagination.  I am not one of those who, wherever they go, make it a constant practice to disparage the higher orders, and to exalt the populace at their expense.  There are many capitals in which the high aristocracy, the lords and ladies, the sons and daughters of nobility, constitute the most remarkable and the most interesting part of the population.  This is the case at Vienna, and more especially at London.  Who can rival the English aristocrat in lofty stature, in dignified bearing, in strength of hand, and valour of heart?  Who rides a nobler horse?  Who has a firmer seat?  And who more lovely than his wife, or sister, or daughter?  But with respect to the Spanish aristocracy, the ladies and gentlemen, the cavaliers and senoras, I believe the less that is said of them on the points to which I have just alluded the better.  I confess, however, that I know little about them; they have, perhaps, their admirers, and to the pens of such I leave their panegyric.  Le Sage has described them as they were nearly two centuries ago.  His description is anything but captivating, and I do not think that they have improved since the period of the sketches of the immortal Frenchman.  I would sooner talk of the lower class, not only of Madrid but of all Spain.  The Spaniard of the lower class has much more interest for me, whether manolo, labourer, or muleteer.  He is not a common being; he is an extraordinary man.  He has not, it is true, the amiability and generosity of the Russian mujik, who will give his only rouble rather than the stranger shall want; nor his placid courage, which renders him insensible to fear, and at the command of his Tsar, sends him singing to certain death.  There is more hardness and less self-devotion in the disposition of the Spaniard; he possesses, however, a spirit of proud independence, which it is impossible but to admire.  He is ignorant, of course; but it is singular that I have invariably found amongst the low and slightly educated classes far more liberality of sentiment than amongst the upper.  It has long been the fashion to talk of the bigotry of the Spaniards, and their mean jealousy of foreigners.  This is true to a certain extent:  but it chiefly holds good with respect to the upper classes.  If foreign valour or talent has never received its proper meed in Spain, the great body of the Spaniards are certainly not in fault.  I have heard Wellington calumniated in this proud scene of his triumphs, but never by the old soldiers of Aragon and the Asturias, who assisted to vanquish the French at Salamanca and the Pyrenees.  I have heard the manner of riding of an English jockey criticized, but it was by the idiotic heir of Medina Celi,⁵ and not by a picador of the Madrilenian bull ring."

¹Water sellers

²"Calesas" are small horse-drawn carriages, "caleseros" their drivers. I find the parallel with modern taxi drivers very easy to see.

³I think this should be "reposteros," pastry makers (Borrow is confusing the Spanish and Italian words).

⁴Young, working-class men and women of Madrid who wore the typical costumes seen in so many of Goya's pictures. I don't think Borrow means more than that, but in their origins, "manolos" and "manolas" were from the barrio of Lavapiés (the old Jewish quarter), to the south of the centre, as opposed to their rivals, the "chulapos" and "chulapas" from the district of Malasaña, to the north of the centre. 

⁵Medinaceli, one of the oldest dukedoms in Spain.