Rainy Days

Zara vest (similar)
Zara trousers (similar)
A. Cloud bag (c/o) (similar)
Zara sandals (similar)
RayBan sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o)
Location: Calle del Duque de Rivas – Madrid, Spain

We woke up on our second full day in Madrid to grey skies. No one travels to Spain in late summer expecting anything but warmth and sunshine. When we told people where we were going, they invariably replied, “It’s going to be hot.” That’s what we wanted. That’s what we planned for, and we packed our suitcases accordingly. I didn’t even bother to bring along a pair of close toed shoes, I was so confident we’d be enjoying warmth and sun.

This, despite the fact that the threat of rainy weather wasn’t exactly a surprise. I’d been watching the forecast for days before our departure, hoping that the clouds would simply disappear from it, or move into the next week, after we’d returned to Canada. Neither of those things happened. Clouds rolled in, bringing rainy weather with them. We snapped these photos in a matter of minutes, rushing back inside as soon as the droplets began to fall.

The rainy weather persisted for three days. When we travelled to Valencia by train on Monday, which was the third day, it took almost the full three hour journey for us to get out from under the darkest clouds that hung over Madrid and the surrounding cities.

To call days of rainy weather unusual for the Madrid region is a gross understatement. We got emergency notices on our cell phones from the Spanish military, recommending that all citizens shelter in place. It didn’t just rain – it poured. The amount of rain that fell over night between Saturday and Sunday, and again between Sunday and Monday, can only be described as a deluge. We, of course, persisted with our plans to get out and see the city. But we did ultimately buy umbrellas, which were well-used.

All of that was still to come, in the fifteen minutes of the Saturday morning when we captured these photos. We could not have imagined, in these short moments, the weather that lay ahead. We lived in Vancouver for a decade – rainy weather is nothing new for us. But there are times and places, contexts in which you expect it. Madrid in early September is not one of them. How much could it really rain, we thought, perhaps dismissively. It was still summer. The past two days had been beautifully, blissfully sunny.

We would learn soon enough. But we captured these photos in happy ignorance. When we ran inside to get out of the rain, we expected it would pass in the time it took us to change and get ready to go out again…

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