A Baroness in Chains

Baroness Carmen von Thyssen Bornemisza has had enough of the city government of Madrid, and of Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón. Ever since Madrid was declared a candidate for the 2012 Olympics, a bid which it lost last summer to London, the Partido Popular majority in City Hall has implemented an incessant rennovation of Spain's capital city. Construction, bulldozing, and traffic detours may be found on almost all main streets, leading Danny DeVito to comment in an interview regarding his visit to Madrid last summer that if City Hall ever finds the buried treasure, let him know. Baroness Thyssen, however, is not laughing.

One of the many "improvements in infraestructure" proposed by City Hall is the restriction of traffic flow in downtown Madrid, specifically reducing the Paseo del Prado to two lanes of traffic from four, a project the government hopes will discourage drivers from taking their cars into the city's center. Surely, the plan might stand as one of the most ridiculous -not to mention costly- methods to reduce traffic flow in Madrid's already congested downtown. But what irks the Baroness is that this restriction of traffic flow would not only bulldoze the Paseo del Prado's 700 trees, it will also tear up her front lawn, encroaching on the property of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

The Thyssen Museum has been lauded as housing the most important private art collection of the 20th century. The museum hosts over 600 works from the Baroness' own collection, currently on loan to the museum, as well as the permanent collection (formerly the Baroness' collection, as well) acquired by the Spanish government in 1993 to the tune of 350 million dollars, making for nearly one thousand works of art housed in a building designed by internationally celebrated arquitect Rafael Moneo. And that's no small contribution to the cultural landcape of Spain's capital city.

So when Gallardón proposed the reconstruction of the Paseo del Prado (yes, the Prado Art Museum is right across the street) the Baroness abandoned all aristocratic proprieties and started to get nasty-- she threatened to pull her collection and find a more hospitable city where she might show her deceased husband's fortune in paintings. Insults ensued. Mayor Gallardón remarked, regarding the Baroness' distaste for the rennovations, "We should pay more attention to intelligence than to aristocracy," adding insult to injury. And the director of Urban Development of Madrid, Pilar Martínez, described Carmen Thyssen as "a capricious and intolerant woman, who bypasses democratic procedure and puts her personal interests before those of the citizens."

In response to these comments Thyssen retorted in an interview, "There are some things you should think about twice before saying." And in a rather ironic statement following this retort, the Baroness then continued to insult the Third World as somehow less civilized than Spain: "We're talking about something that affects the entire world, the taking care of our green spaces. It's as if we're in Brazil! And that can't be!"

Nevertheless, the Baroness realizes that time is running out after three years of bickering with City Hall. In fact, if Gallardón and his team of architects do not budge soon, she has openly declared that she will chain herself to an elevated platform in one of the trees if they do not immediately cease plans to dig up the Paseo del Prado, a statement that has earned her the regard of an aristocratic hero among environmental activists and the many citizens angered by Gallardón's push for perpetual construction. What would motivate a high-heeled aristocrat to live in a treehouse, whose sole nourishment would come from five-star catered meals delivered with the help of a rope and pulley?

"Trees have lives too. They speak," she says. And what do they say, Carmen? "They emit waves, energy, messages. They know that we are with them, that we are defending them, and they gift us with life. It's important to know this." Whether the trees know it or not, the Baroness will continue fighting. "It's that I can't just stop now. I'm a taurus by birth and when I get something in my head I become stubborn. They [those at City Hall] don't know me. Of course we'll continue fighting because, although it offends a lot of them, I know I'm right."

I hope Carmen Thyssen keeps fighting, whatever her zodiac sign, because not only would give me the chance to see a Baroness live in a treehouse; more importantly, she promises to bring some public opposition to Gallardón's mostly unchallenged plans to redesign Madrid.