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Back home from Madrid and I managed to go through today's photographs. And made a little collage of today.

We walked everywhere in the city. All around there's beautiful buildings and details to admire. So this collage has some of that and one art installation (grey blankets) that we saw. Each blanket has covered a body during the 2016 immigration crises in Greece (if I understood the Spanish well enough).

We visited the Royal Palace today as a main attraction. There were few places inside where it was allowed to take pictures. So there's few tasties and I can only tell that it was so gorgeous with all the styles and colors, and artwork and what not. I wonder if the people who work there go home to a white house. It was just so colorful and vivid inside. Absolutely stunning.

And then there's the Madrid Meninas. Las Meninas is a 1656 painting in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Its complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted. Because of these complexities, Las Meninas has been one of the most widely analyzed works in Western painting.

The painting shows a large room in the Royal Alcazar of Madrid during the reign of King Philip IV of Spain, and presents several figures, most identifiable from the Spanish court, captured, according to some commentators, in a particular moment as if in a snapshot. Some look out of the canvas towards the viewer, while others interact among themselves. The young Infanta Margaret Theresa is surrounded by her entourage of maids of honour, chaperone, bodyguard, two dwarfs and a dog. Just behind them, Velázquez portrays himself working at a large canvas. Velázquez looks outwards, beyond the pictorial space to where a viewer of the painting would stand. In the background there is a mirror that reflects the upper bodies of the king and queen. They appear to be placed outside the picture space in a position similar to that of the viewer, although some scholars have speculated that their image is a reflection from the painting Velázquez is shown working on.

Las Meninas has long been recognised as one of the most important paintings in Western art history. The Baroque painter Luca Giordano said that it represents the "theology of painting" and in 1827 the president of the Royal Academy of Arts Sir Thomas Lawrence described the work in a letter to his successor David Wilkie as "the true philosophy of the art". More recently, it has been described as "Velázquez's supreme achievement, a highly self-conscious, calculated demonstration of what painting could achieve, and perhaps the most searching comment ever made on the possibilities of the easel painting".

We didn't see the painting, but we saw some of the Meninas on the streets of Madrid and these little statues (250€-320€) in the gift shop of the Palacio Real. So I bought 2 t-shirts to myself instead! (Clever huh?)

Las Meninas de Velázquez return to the streets of Madrid. A sample that includes more than 50 original plastic meninas of 1.80 meters high created by artists, actors and actresses, chefs and athletes. A series that invites you to photograph yourself with the figures designed by Rosana, Rafael Nadal, Dani Rovira, Ouka Leele, Samantha Vallejo-Nájera, María Pombo, Quique Dacosta or Minerva Piquero, among other personalities.

Las Meninas, those bridesmaids of the Infanta Margarita present in the famous Velázquez painting, reinvent themselves once again, and far from becoming obsolete, they are very aware of the trends. From the menina that celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Friends series (yesterday's Blip), located next to the orange sofa of the well-known coffee shop of the Central Perk series that can be visited next to the Royal Palace; to the brewmaster; the follower of the latest fashion; or the motor fan. All people who live or visit the city will find their own figure to take a picture with.

Tomorrow I'll go through yesterday's photos. There might be around 300 of them. Today I only had about 100 sort out.