MADRID — On a warm spring day outside Estadio Vicente Calderón, home of Atlético Madrid, a couple of workmen in fluorescent yellow vests are attending to a large steel door. One has the easier job, languorously holding the door in place as his colleague strains to tighten a dozen studded bolts in turn. After a few minutes of grunting and heaving, the two men swing it open and shut, open and shut, to test that it is firmly fastened.
It feels fitting, somehow, that just a few weeks before that door closes for good — along with all of the others in this peeling, patchwork concrete bowl a gentle 15-minute walk south of downtown — there is still work to be done.