It's 1am and the bongo drums are beating loudly in the packed
Plaza Barcelo. In a corner of the square a large plastic rubbish container
is ablaze, a crowd of drunken young people cheering as the fire brigade
puts it out.
Down a street towards the nearby Plaza Santa Barbara four youths are
urinating against a wall. A fifth is throwing up. The ground is sticky
with what I hope is spilt booze. The crushed debris of bottles, wine
cartons, plastic bags and cups is strewn all around.
Welcome to Europe's biggest regular street party, Madrid's botellon.
In 24 central city squares tens, some say hundreds, of thousands of 15
to 25-year-olds gather on weekend nights to drink, smoke dope, beat drums,
score with the opposite sex or fall into an alcoholic stupor.
Street thermometers show two degrees above freezing but thousands of
people are crowded into the Plaza Santa Barbara swigging calimocho - cheap
red wine mixed with Coke - from plastic bottles.
More adventurous, and mindbending mixtures being passed around include
whisky and vermouth, red wine and vodka or tequila with just about anything.
Most of those here live at home and do not have their own flats to entertain
in. Bars and nightclubs are too expensive, they say. "Anyway, the
music is so loud in those places that you can't even talk," says Angel,
a 19-year-old law student clutching a litre of beer in the Plaza Santa
Barbara. "It's better out here." A botellon, everyone agrees, is the cheapest
way to get legless.
The authorities claim that 200,000 young Madrilenos agree and spend
their weekend nights drinking in these squares until 4am, driving neighbours
to despair.
Or at least they did until last week. For the city that prides itself
on being open all night has finally rebelled against the botellon. The
rightwing city mayor, Jose Maria Alvarez del Manzano, has pledged to "put
an army of police on to the streets" to stamp it out.
His army set to work last weekend. The Plaza Dos de Mayo, capital of
the botellon movement, was closed off by riot police in the small hours
of last Saturday morning.
"Usually there are so many people here you can't even see the sand on
the ground," one policeman said. "Not even the snow keeps them away. They
just light bonfires."
A gang of dreadlocked botelloneros stood arguing with the police. "This
square belongs to everyone," one complained loudly.
"Like hell it does. Go back to your own neighbourhood and take that
scum with you," shouted a middle-aged woman walking her dog.
Giving up, they slipped off to the Plaza Santa Barbara.
When the mayor's army arrived there shortly after 1am, the revellers
drifted to the Plaza Villa de Paris.
The botellon, police found, is like mercury: stop it in one place and
it flows elsewhere.
The mayor has pledged to get tougher this weekend.
The new cocktail for weekend nights is this: gallons of alcohol, tens
of thousands of frustrated youths and hundreds of twitchy riot police -
a far more explosive mixture than booze, bongos and dope.