Plane Crash

Look up at the rooftop on the corner buildings with elegant, glass balconies that curve like a pin. See the upside-down wings? That’s Accidente Aéreo — The Plane Crash — a sculpture depicting a life-sized winged man who crash-landed headfirst onto the rooftops of Madrid. Some say it’s a fallen angel cast out of paradise. Others see it as Icarus, the mythological figure who flew too close to the sun. But the artist, Miguel Ruiz, tells a different story. He imagines that 10,000 years ago, a winged man went out to fly, drifting backward through the sky, basking in the final rays of sunshine. What he didn’t realise was that a city had grown up in the quiet meadow where he always landed. This sculpture captures the moment of that unexpected, distracted fall.