On The Cover of GQ: Javier Bardem

If Rome is the Eternal City, then Madrid  is the infernal one on this Monday afternoon at the very end of July, sun lasering, mercury pushing one hundred degrees. And yet hell is not entirely a temperature this season in Spain: Over a month ago, the prime minister asked the EU to bail out the country's failing banks, a move that has done little to quell the feverish pitch of protest. The youth, facing 50 percent unemployment, have set up makeshift camps in the Puerta del Sol. Government workers, buckling under pay cuts, have blocked city thoroughfares and railway lines, while miners, on the verge of layoffs, have marched on the capital from the Spanish countryside. Their convergence on a ministry building has sparked a violent melee with police that has left over seventy injured in a spray of rubber bullets. In the days leading up to my visit with Javier Bardem, the masses have marched almost daily to protest the government's new austerity measures, including Bardem himself, who took to the streets with his brother, Carlos, to remonstrate against tax hikes.

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