In addition to constituting a fantasy structure, the Crystal Palace - eternal custodian of a small lake where ducks, turtles, pigeons and fish coexist harmoniously with the beautiful aquatic conifers that surround it - is one of the most magical and indeed more visited from that authentic natural lung of Madrid, which is our veteran and venerable Retiro Park.

It will be because it is located at the end of a path, which makes gloomy, not by no means gloomy, endless rows of oaks, elms and familiar poplars, like those others that the poet Antonio Machado sang on his solitary walks along the Douro riverbank as it passes through Soria, where the shadows of the passers-by increase and seem to want to fly, like that other one, wayward and restless, which according to the author's imagination, Barry, forced the intrepid Peter Pan to learn to sew to keep it always safely.

Because, leaving romanticism aside and remembering Jung, it could be thought that sometimes, that kind of scares are usually typical of the shadow: that dark brother of human individuality.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property.