Javier Reverte, a Spanish writer, notes how the weather has changed in Madrid in his lifetime (excerpted from Granta, translated by Amanda Hopkinson):
Throughout my childhood, adults would repeat ancient verses–all about the seasons–which, with remarkable frequency, would coincide with the actual forecasts made. "In January, a dog seeks out the shade" (frequent sunny spells even in midwinter); "February the crazy" (the unpredictable nature of the February climate); "When March may, May marches" (if the weather is fine at the end of winter, spring will be cold); "In April, waters mill" (a reference to the Spring rains); "Water in May makes your hair and the grass grow" (Spring rains were particularly good for new growth); "In August, with cold in your face" (the North wind got colder at the end of Summer); "The air of Madrid never snuffed out either a candle or a man" (a reference, dating from the sixteeth century, to the iciness of the air in the sierra surrounding Madrid).
In Madrid today, the four seasons exist only on a calendar. It hardly ever snows, the lakes and the river never freeze over and we eat fruit that tastes of nothing all year round. If March may, May calls up siroccos from the deserts of Africa. In April, it scarcely ever rains, and the ground cracks open. The birds have fled the asphalt, no caterpillars tumble from their cocoons in the trees, the crickets no longer thrum, the flowers barely smell and storms grow rare. The cold, happily, remains nestling only in the corners of my childhood memories. But a hard heat rolls in on weary, sticky waves, right into our brains where it lodges for months on end. It is a new kind of heat, wearisome and defeating, which still seems somehow unbelievable to those of us who happened to be born sixty years ago.
Kit Stolz 