Even though my year abroad is coming to an end, I still have just over a month left in Madrid. I have been here for eight months now and have not ceased to be surprised by what I see in this city. I noticed that Madrid is quite fond of its original marketing ideas which leads to why I wanted to post about what I saw last week.

I was on the metro, on line 3- nothing special so far. It’s a fairly narrow metro so more often than not, you end up being squeezed in. Anyways, as the metro got to Callao, I realised that the whole station had been taken over by The Great Gatsby. The walls, the benches, the floor and even the bins had been covered.

The walls were an endless series of the film’s promotional posters, the benches had been covered to look like plush red velvet sofas, the floor was plastered with some fancy tile looking decals and the bins had the title of the film with the release date on them. 

Similarly to Gatsby’s lifestyle, these decorations kept in theme and were also over the top. For a second, it didn’t even feel like Madrid anymore; the station name just blended into the decor but all I could think about was when had this been done? It must have taken a good few hours to stick all of this down without getting many air bubbles under! Apart from worrying about the practical side of things, I was impressed by the temporary makeover that the Callao metro station had had done. I don’t often see metro stations being remodelled for films and it didn’t take long before I had told my friends here about it. Whichever agency was behind it, I guess their technique worked: it was such an imposing act that people could not avoid it and for me, when I can’t avoid something, I usually talk about it.