Machado used to attend the gatherings that were held in the afternoons in the back room of Don Adolfo Almazán, gymnastics teacher at the institute and mayor of the city in 1914.

The original building of the Almazán pharmacy was located on Calle de San Francisco, in front of the old Franciscan convent. The pharmacy was in operation until the seventies of the 20th century. Later the building where it was located was closed and then demolished. In these meetings, although the poet used to keep quiet and listen to others, they talked about politics, the country and the weather. Some gatherings where Machado would join the pharmacist’s friends: the doctor, a councilor, the director of the institute, a lawyer, the notary, the registrar and the institute’s secretary.

CXXVIII
POEM FOR A DAY

RURAL MEDITATIONS

(…)It’s nighttime. People are chatting in the back of a store.

“I don’t know,

don José,

how these liberals can be so rotten, so immoral.”(…)