Matt, founder
I arrived in Madrid in 2011 with a one-year teaching contract and a suitcase I didn't bother unpacking properly. That was the plan. One year, then somewhere else.
Fifteen years later, I'm still finding out I don't know this city as well as I think I do.
It happened slowly, and mostly by accident. A wrong turn off Calle Mayor that led to a courtyard I'd never have found on purpose. A conversation with a bar owner in La Latina who explained, over three unhurried coffees, why his street looks the way it does. The smell of a bakery at seven in the morning that's been doing the same thing since before the war. Madrid doesn't hand itself over all at once. It gives you one street, one plaza, one story at a time, and only if you're paying attention.
That's still how I explore it, over a decade later: neighbourhood by neighbourhood, building by building, plate by plate. The history matters to me, genuinely, not as trivia but as the thing that explains why a street bends the way it does, or why a door is carved the way it is. So does the food. So do the people who've lived here their whole lives and have opinions about everything. So do the quiet architectural details nobody points a camera at.
Walking Tours Madrid is my attempt to hand a small piece of that over to people visiting for a few days. Not a highlight reel. Not a script. The version of the city I'd actually walk a friend through, told properly, at a pace where you can actually take it in.
That's the standard every tour is held to: real years living in Madrid, and a genuine passion for its history, architecture, and food culture, not a memorised script handed to someone else.