Most guides send you to Chueca and stop there. It is a good place to start, but it is not the whole city, and after two nights it starts to feel like a theme-park version of queer Madrid.

Start somewhere quieter. Lavapies has the bookshops, the small bars and the mix of people that makes Madrid feel like Madrid. Malasana is where the music is. La Latina on a Sunday is where you eat too much and stay too long.

Do the museum thing properly. The Reina Sofia at opening time, not at three in the afternoon when every group tour arrives at once. Then walk down to the river and watch the city stop pretending to be busy.

Ask about the night before you commit to it. Madrid runs late, and the room you walk into at midnight is not the room you would have found at nine. A local will tell you which nights are worth staying up for and which ones are better skipped.

That is the whole point of a host. Not a script, and not a flag on a website. Someone who lives here and will tell you the truth about their own city.