The last years (maybe the 4 or 5 last years) I take my holidays out of the "normal timetable", half of them the last 2 weeks in july (because of the scout group summer camp) and the other 2 weeks in june or september or other dates, but not august.
The normal here in Spain is to have holidays in august... so this month Madrid is empty... all the people go to the beach, of travel to other countries, or go to the villages in the mountain... so you can go to the cinemas and nobody in there; you can go to the restaurants and a lot of space... the subway is empty all the day...
The bad thing is sometimes you have so much space that... you can re