Is it art?

Or is it just a bunch of crap hanging on walls, that inexplicably people will pay good money for?

Last Saturday, my flatmate and I decided it was time to get some "culture". Neither of us, by our own admission, are that interested in art, but we live in a city with allegedly 3 of the best art galleries ever! The Prado, the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia. We plumped for the Reina Sofia cos it was free on a Saturday afternoon.

Having stuffed ourselves full of patatas bravas, huevos y fritos and, in Nat's case, calamares, along with a large beer, we joined the other freebie-seekers at the gallery.

4 floors. 4 floors of.......? Well, excuse me for appearing un-cultured, but in my opinion, 4 floors of shite. In the entire place, I found around 10 paintings I actually liked - 7 by Dali who I already knew I was a fan of, and 3 previously unseen. They were: Procesion de la Muerte by José Gutierra Solana, Un Mundo by Angeles Santos Torroella and a pencil drawing of a Basque Cemetery by Dario de Regoyos (can't find that one on the net).

As for Guernica by Picasso, supposedly the piéce de resistance and the gallery's pride and joy - all I can say is I have absolutely no idea what all the fuss is about. I've heard people going on about this painting ever since I arrived. "Oh you must go to the Reina Sofia, at least to see Guernica" etc etc. Well, now I have. And I wish I hadn't bothered. It's smaller than I expected and to me, just looks like another Picasso except it's black and white.

Maybe we were unlucky. Maybe sometimes the temporary exhibitions are better and we just picked the wrong week. There was a lot of modern and cubist art on show, neither of which do anything for me at all. And I'm afraid that the signs above some of the rooms proclaiming "Experimental, neo-modern" etc (isn't neo-modern some kind of tautology?) put us off even sticking our heads round the door.

After about 2 hours we were done, somewhat disillusioned and consoled ourselves with a glass of red at a local bar and headed home! Not a total waste of an afternoon as at least we can now say we've been there, but I won't be going back any time soon.