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There are lots of ways it could have happened: I could have been pickpocketed, or shattered a vase in an antiques shop, or accidentally dropped a 50-euro bill down a sewer grate.

But after a long string of successful $100 weekends, from New York City to Istanbul, I finally blew past my limit. At least it was for a happier cause: two women from Portugal invited me to go dancing at a club with a 14-euro cover. At about 1.40 dollars to the euro, that’s around $20, and $20 covers have no place on such a minuscule budget.

And it happened last month in Madrid, a city with enough free culture, beautiful parks and 1-euro ham sandwiches to make a cheap weekend a breeze.

Free lodging was also a breeze, since I chose Madrid to take advantage of a long-standing invitation from José Luis (the Spanish boyfriend of a friend), who provided me with an empty apartment and great advice. If only he had told me to stay away from Portuguese women.

Friday

The bananas were just 65 euro cents, but cost me in other ways. Knowing that Spaniards dine late, I stopped into a convenience store in José Luis’s neighborhood, Carabanchel, to grab a snack before an early evening visit to the Museo del Prado. The owners were speaking Spanish with the familiar Dominican lilt that I know so well from New York, and I decided to ask for night-life advice. When it comes to dancing the night away, I need one of two things: a healthy budget for drinks, or a place that plays the music I can dance to: merengue and bachata — Dominican music, as it happens. They told me the place to be was Sugar Hot, a spot that was — pardon? — in a covered bullfighting stadium. I jotted down the subway directions.

$100 Weekends Quick trips, limited funds.

But first, the Prado, Madrid’s star museum, which is, for some odd and wonderful reason, free after 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and after 5 p.m. on Sunday. No huge lines (at least when I got there around 6:30): just show up, walk in and dive into the masterpieces. Making matters even better for casual art fans who feel a twinge of inadequacy when asked if they prefer Goya, Velázquez or El Greco, the floor plan that the Prado gives out is brilliant, including mini-images of the collection’s most famous works and where to find them.

The museum closed at 8 p.m., and I killed the dead time before 10, Madrid’s dinner hour, with a few cañas, the small draft beers served for 1 to 2 euros in bars across the city (often with free tapas). My first stop was Pozo Real, a pleasantly calm spot (at that hour) where I chatted with a couple toting their baby around, then Malaspina, a more bustling bar full of rough-hewn wood and earth tones, where I added an order of patatas bravas to the cheese slices and mini-sandwiches that kept coming with the cañas.

Finally, it was late enough to figure out how a Dominican club might fit in a huge bullfighting stadium. But when I arrived around 12:30 a.m. at the Casa del Reloj metro stop in Leganés, outside the Madrid city limits, there was La Cubierta; built into its walls are endless Latin nightclubs so cheesy, they’re best avoided by the night-life lactose-intolerant. I have no such dietary restrictions, and Sugar Hot was free to enter and plenty Dominican, with bachata the dominant genre. But the crowd maxed out at about 10 people, a mix of Spaniards and immigrants. I had come on the wrong night; it’s packed on Saturdays, apparently. The subway, though, didn’t start up again until after 5 a.m., so I was stuck for a few hours. Luckily, the owner plied his few customers with free drinks to prevent the place from emptying out.

Amount spent: $34.03.

Amount left: $65.97.

Saturday

Unsurprisingly, I got off to a late start on Saturday. In the early afternoon I took the subway (just 93 euro cents a trip if you buy a 10-pack) to the Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, a small chapel that is not only the burial site of Goya, but also the home of some of his best work, in the form of ceiling and wall frescoes. It’s a little-known (and free) attraction, well worth the visit. For lunch, I pieced together a cheap meal by snacking at two mediocre chains, 100 Montaditos, a beer spot that serves tiny sandwiches for a pittance, and the Museo del Jamón, which is not a “ham museum” but a chain of luncheonette-style bars, where bready sandwiches light on meat start at 1 euro.

Then it was on to CaixaForum Madrid, an art gallery (free) currently showing two arresting exhibitions, one of mesmerizingly chaotic photographs taken in Haiti soon after the earthquake last year, and the other of treasures from Teotihuacán, the pre-Columbian city that met a mysterious end centuries before the first Europeans reached the New World. And on to the Parque del Retiro, a 350-acre park with formal gardens and exhibition spaces; there’s a lake to row on and a pond where children introduce the turtles, ducks and swans to a junk food diet, feeding them potato chips and doughnuts. A quick look-and-run at Picasso’s Guernica at the nearby Reina Sofia museum (also free for parts of every day), and I was done until dinner.

I headed to the Conde Duque neighborhood and a restaurant José Luis had recommended: Gabriel, an affordable spot with a warm, sophisticated-locals-only feel that gave me a Brooklyn vibe. I sat at the bar and ordered the artisanal morcilla (blood sausage) with two eggs and pine nuts (9 euros) and a mojito (6 euros). I asked why the morcilla was so inexpensive. “We’re not here to rob our customers,” the bartender said. “We cover our costs and a little bit more.”

My efforts to find a place with homespun, not-too-expensive flamenco (as opposed to the pricey dinner shows put on for tourists) failed: of the two frugal spots I had caught wind of, one (Soleá) had closed and the other, Clan, had halted live performances for the summer. So I stuck around Gabriel’s Conde Duque neighborhood — full of narrow streets with buzzing bars — dropping into Kabokla, a Brazilian-themed night spot nearby.

There I met that pair of Portuguese women, who were gearing up to go dancing at El Son, the city’s best-known Latin club. When one, Luísa (in town for the weekend with a cheap flight from her home in Oporto) told me unprompted that she was a huge fan of merengue and bachata but wasn’t so fond of salsa — my musical soul mate! — I couldn’t resist joining them. When the cover at El Son turned out to be 14 euros (with two free drinks), it was too late to turn back. An order of 6 a.m. churros and chocolate at the famed Chocolatería San Ginés, and my budget was shot.

Saturday total: $83.99.

In the red: $18.02.

Sunday

With breakfast taken care of before bed, all I needed to do on Sunday was to get myself up at a reasonable hour and over to El Rastro, the can’t-miss, utterly free flea market in the neighborhood of La Latina, by 10:30. Setting aside the galling ubiquity of stands selling Ramones T-shirts, it had a lot of cool stuff, from handmade jewelry to playful dolls to bins of LP’s to change purses made of old comic strips. But knowing I was running a deficit that even a Frugal Traveler Congress wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling on, I abstained. I did have to eat, however, and to test the limits of the free tapa culture, headed to La Chata, a bar and restaurant along La Latina’s gorgeous old Cava Baja street. Luckily, it took just an A.T.M., not a compromise in Washington, to free up 4.20 euros ($6) for three cañas that each came with a small but heaping plate of free paella studded with chunks of chicken, bringing the weekend to a close well over budget. But in retrospect, that $100 seems a bit arbitrary, right? The $130 Weekend; now that has kind of a ring to it.

Sunday total: $11.75.

In the red: $29.77.