Well known is the Salamanca district of Madrid, and not only because it is home to the most exclusive shops or the most refined restaurants in the capital. Historically, illustrious personalities from the world of politics, the arts and the aristocracy have passed and lived through its streets. A neighborhood, also, associated with tradition, also in religion and spirituality. However, the proliferation, in the premises of its centuries-old buildings, of businesses that speak of opening up to new forms of spirituality, from philosophy and well-being brought from Asia to esotericism, is still striking.
On Calle Alcalá, 78, the window of the Almazén Natural is crowned by a sign that defines it as an organic food store and bookstore. Behind the glass are titles that range from meditation manuals to Akashic records, acupuncture and psychotherapy. Very close, less than 200 meters away, on Francisca Moreno street, you can find, door to door, another similar bookstore, Rerum Natura, and a place specializing in traditional Thai massage. Fernando is the owner of Rerum Natura. This bookstore, specialized in alternative therapies, acupuncture, yoga, medicinal plants, meditation and spirituality, has been installed in the neighborhood for 26 years.
“We have always had clients,” says Fernando, “either health professionals who already know us or people who are looking for alternatives to alleviate their ailments.” However, for him, in recent years there has been a certain “persecution” of this type of business. But, Jose, his local neighbor and owner of Zazen Thai Massage, has not experienced it that way. He opened seven years ago, with trained personnel brought from Thailand to offer traditional Thai massage – which is applied with clothes, by means of pressure on the energy points of the body–, ayurveda and siatsu, among others. “There is a great acceptance,” says Jose, with a very soft tone of voice, according to the space where we are, between a musical thread marked by water and images of Buddha. “Opening in this neighborhood was somewhat anticipating the issues of crisis, since, being an area with high purchasing power, it is easier to stay,” he explains. As for his clients, he assures that “there is everything”, from “children to very old people”.
Jose agrees with what they have observed in Tierra Índigo, in Lope de Rueda, 4: what people are looking for is to free themselves from emotional problems. Especially stress. “To the traditional Thai massage we add different techniques to work, above all, anxiety,” explains Federico, from Tierra Índigo. “We make energy points, chakras… and all with relaxing massage sessions,” he adds, acknowledging that “there is a lot of stress in this neighborhood.” “Above all, we have noticed that young women have a lot of anxiety, which is concentrated in the solar plexus. With a meditation part, we teach them to be aware of the breath and then, with a Thai massage technique, we release the solar plexus area.”
It seems that Eastern spirituality has had a great acceptance among the neighbors. Several yoga and reiki studios – a healing technique through the laying of hands on energetic points of the body – have been making their way to Hermosilla Street, 95, where the Order of Ayala was installed more than a decade ago . From the outside, the place looks simple. One should stop to read what is written on the orange label: witchcraft, tarot, esotericism, alternative therapies… “Back then, no one had dared to be so obvious around here,” says Victoria Braojos, owner of the store. “When we were putting up the sign, I went outside to see how it was looking and two ladies walking through the door were shocked,” she recalls. And, although she is convinced that they have done “a very good job” in the neighborhood -so much so that they have opened a new place with a school including a few streets above, in José Ortega y Gasset-, she knows that not everything has been merit yours. The land, in fact, was already planted. “Let’s not fool ourselves,” he says, “we have evidence that in Madrid they have been throwing cards since the 17th century, and that is something that was done almost exclusively among the noblest classes.”
And the fact is that the work they do in La Orden de Ayala has a lot to do with history and research. “We mainly come from ceremonial magic,” Victoria points out, referring to her husband Javier, who is an antiquarian and shares with her such a great passion for magical tradition that it has led them to create a museum on the ground floor of the store. In it there is everything from an authentic voodoo doll brought from Africa by a missionary to a black divination mirror, Egyptian amulets, historical tarot decks, etc. In the store, which people keep coming in all the time we talked to Victoria, you can find everything from figures of saints to books on spirituality, mysticism, essential oils, material for rituals, candles… «Many times they are he speaks of these things with total ignorance”, affirms Victoria, who does not like “the magufadas” at all. “When we opened, the 806 boom had poisoned the work of traditional healers,” she explains. In addition, now, “with the arrival from South America of Santeria, voodoo, etc., I have soaked up that culture because people were getting into trouble with things they did not know.”
In fact, she, who also studies psychology, not only throws the cards. “I have studied the tarot for what it is: a Renaissance work with enormous symbolic power that served for the person to communicate what they felt,” she explains. “With rituals, people open up in a different way, just like they do when explaining what they see on a Rochard test,” she says. For this reason, Victoria understands the tarot as a means of projection, even more than divination. Perhaps this is the essential point that unites from the Thai massage to this vision of the tarot: that “what is really important is that the person can establish bridges with himself», as Victoria points out. “Whether through a candle, a crystal ball or a deck, what is sought is that each one connects with the essential, with his subconscious, so that things change in his life.” Of course, this must always be “guided by an expert,” warns Victoria.
But, how is all this framed in a place like the Salamanca district? Rafael Ruíz Andrés, professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and author of the book “La secularización en España”, considers that it is something “really representative”. “Traditionally, secularization has been interpreted as a situation of religious decline,” he says. “Today, that conception has changed. As we understand it today, it includes precisely that process of, when the presence of the dominant religion loses weight, appear new spiritualities and, even, there is a metamorphosis of traditional religions, as is the case of Catholicism”, he adds, stressing that “the Salamanca neighborhood is not exempt from this secularization, because we also live in a global world in which there is more knowledge from other cultures and spiritualities.
In this sense, a priori, it might seem that there is a certain confrontation between these traditional Catholic values and the appearance of new spiritualities. But, as Ruíz Andrés points out, “there is no such dilemma.” “In a way, this secularization has occurred in parallel with the era of subjectivization and individuality, in which one’s own perception of the world predominates,” he says. With this, individual values also prevail over those of the community. “The self is the ultimate source of choice. For this reason, the individual himself can combine traditional and Catholic values in this case, with other forms of spirituality, without falling into contradiction », he explains. «The representativeness of the Salamanca neighborhood in all this is something really significant, concludes the researcher, since it is a clear example “of how far the secularization process has come, which has settled, even in the most traditional neighborhoods.” “In a certain way, this shows that the process of secularization is advanced in all strata of Spanish society, that it has not only affected those who do not go to mass or who do not declare themselves religious. It is not like this. These trends have also reached people who have not stopped declaring themselves Catholic and who a priori we think have not secularized, but the truth is that they have.