Spanish Shilling

Madrid, like Barcelona and Valencia, has adopted la gentrificacíon, urban renovation where the rents go up, the old joints are closed down or turned into vanity or impulse stores in a system known to Spanish economists as Premium Mediocre – that’s to say, cheaply expensive.

It sounds swell, looks good and costs a little more, whether it’s a Starbucks outlet, bubble coffee, choosing Uber over a taxi, a bottle of designer water, food that photographs better than it tastes, dragon fruit, stores with boiled pick and mix sweets sold by weight or Pistachio chocolate from Dubai… and of course voting Partido Popular (a few years back, it would have been supporting Ciudadanos, eating mangoes and putting watercress in sandwiches).  

My little romantic village of Mojácar has chosen a similar route, with the beach-bars now demolished and re-built in brick, bicycle lanes along the side of the beach-road, children's playgrounds (also invariably located on the beach), and an artful number of parades, fiestas and celebrations to attract the visitors. We have transformed in a short time from bohemian to bourgeois.

I was criticised by a British woman today while attempting to find a parking spot on the playa, because my car was covered in dust. 'Lady', I said, 'I live in a gravel pit'.

If this all means that the rents have gone up, well that's the point! 

Down past the Castellana, on the bit called Paseo de Recoletos, opposite the Biblioteca Nacional de España, is a famous old watering hole called the Café Gijón, founded in 1888. It’s probably Madrid’s most famous joint, along with the Bar Chicote (perennially popular since 1931 for its cocktails), Viva Madrid (where the hep out-of-towners would meet), the good old Cervecería Alemana (there used to be a sign there: ‘We don’t serve hippies. They don’t like us, and we don’t like them’), and there’s the Café Central (for the best live jazz since 1982). 

I used to enjoy the Café Gijón. It was olde-worlde and had mirrors everywhere, a house bootblack, free newspapers in a wooden frame, elderly waiters in white jackets, and an inevitable clutch of poets or philosophers arguing happily between each other while seated around one of the tables (it didn’t run to a bar). Spain used to do these things so well.

I had a French girlfriend back in 1980 when I was living in Madrid. Walking into the Gijón one day, I saw her sitting by herself at a table next to a window and enjoying a coffee. I ambled over and sat down – Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? I asked (those ten years of French at school stood me well with Huguette).

‘Who the hell are you’, she answered – and as it happened she had a point, since it turned out to be somebody entirely different.

Does that ever happen to you?

There’s a scene in La Colmena (a book about the penniless intellectuals in post-war Franco’s times) where a poet drops something on the floor. When he looks up from below – he finds that his marble-topped table is in fact a reversed tombstone mounted on the ornate metal legs of the slab with the inscription of some departed Spaniard inscribed thereon.

All the tables, he discovers looking around, are the same.

Do you remember those old off-white tables, before the Mahou plastic ones came along?

The years pass. Now the Museo Chicote, with its Guinness Book collection of bottles, has a disc-jockey. The Viva Madrid (1856) still sounds good – although it has turned into a cocktail bar, the Cervecería Alemana (1904) the best for ice-cold beers (rich hippies welcome), now only with table service and the Café Central (where you could see jazz greats like Pedro Iturralde and Jorge Pardo), well, the owner just put the rent up, so the jazz bar closes on April 15th to move to El Ateneo de Madrid, just a few minutes away.

As for the Café Gijón, the very best of them all (where I would meet my father when he was in town), the place was closed last year but has now reopened as a more professional operation.

Let’s see what they say: OKDiario gushes with ‘The historic Café Gijón, located on the Paseo de Recoletos, is embarking on a new chapter after its acquisition by the Majorcan Cappuccino Group, a deal that has generated considerable excitement in the city. After months of closure and renovations, the establishment is reopening with a promise to respect its legacy, but also with a necessary update to adapt to modern times…’

Here’s El Mundo: ‘Madrid's Café Gijón reopens, 'asking' for tips in the US style and targeting international luxury tourists’. It says that ‘…The lively conversations that used to fill the afternoons have given way to an offering geared towards high-spending tourists, in which traditional dishes have been replaced by an international menu’.

The bill, when you ask for it, comes with ‘a suggested gratuity’ of 10 or 15% on top.

Now, here in Spain – until yesterday at least – we don’t tip. The staff’s emolument is included in the bill. Half the time, if you do leave the change (a few coins, not more), the boss gets to keep it anyway.