Photo Friday - Miraflores de la Sierra, Madrid, Spain

These are some old and some very old photos of the village of Miraflores de la Sierra near Madrid, Spain.  This is where my husband spent the summers with his grandparents when he was growing up.  He was born in New York City while his Dad worked at the United Nations. They lived in Brooklyn and Queens when he was small. Every summer his parents would send him to live in Spain.  According to Wikipedia, today Miraflores has a population of about 6,000 people and is much bigger than it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

Here is an old photo of Vincent's grandparents, Jose Garcia and Maria Consuelo Martin, and an unknown person, on their balcony in Miraflores.  This photo was probably taken in the 1960s.

In Miraflores there is a grotto dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Begoña (Our Lady of the Begonias, named after the Virgin appeared in the Basilica of Begoña in Bilbao, Spain in 1511).  Every time we visit here, we light a candle.  This must be an old tradition, because here is a photo of Vincent's cousins lighting candles in the early 1970s at the grotto.  The third photo shows the grotto in 2010.

There was a community swimming pool in Miraflores, so of course we have many photos of the children in the family swimming there.  Here is Vincent's cousin Chemari as a little boy swimming in that same pool in the 1960s!

And here is Chemari and Vincent (the little boy) in the 1970s at the same pool!

Vincent in the streets of Miraflores, circa 1970

Here we all are, including me, my daughter and future son-in-law, Chemari and his wife, walking the streets of Miraflores in 2010.

In 1986, when I was pregnant with my daughter, we visited Miraflores for a day.  These are his grandparents on their balcony, waving goodbye to us! Compare this to the first photo up above, which was taken 20 years earlier!

This photo from July 1995 is at the pub in the village plaza, called "Bar España".  It shows Vincent's mother, her aunt Tia Luisa, and her cousin José Manuel and his wife Antonia. My husband remembers going to this pub in 1969 to see the moon landing, it was the only color TV in Miraflores!

This is the plaza of Miraflores in 2010 (during siesta time, so no one was in the streets!)

Here is a photo from the 1980s of some cousins at the fountain outside of Miraflores.  The second photo is the same fountain, with Vincent in 2010.

-------------------------

Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Photo Friday - Miraflores de la Sierra, Madrid, Spain", Nutfield Genealogy, posted June 7, 2019, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/06/photo-friday-miraflores-de-la-sierra.html: accessed [access date]).