I just heard that an estimated 85,000 bars in Spain succumbed to Covid. That's out of an estimated total of 250,000. The bars, the sort described above, are nearly always family run businesses. They open at some hideous time in the morning, for the regulars on their way to work or, in rural areas at the weekends, for the hunters. They close late at night. The money they make isn't sufficient to refit the place nor to provide a decent wage to the family who run it. But they keep going because nobody in the family draws a real wage. It's more like spending money or housekeeping money from a common pot. They are almost certainly the type of bars that went to the wall during the pandemic.
It's not as though these bars are an endangered species but they are definitely on the vulnerable list. They were a product of a poorer Spain, a Spain that went to the bar to watch the football, a Spain where the bar had regulars who formed a community and never considered going to another bar, the sort of bar which sold the same Christmas lottery ticket to the whole neighbourhood. In most cases regulars didn't really need to order anything because the people behind the bar knew that Manolo wanted a brandy with his morning coffee, a Mahou when he came in at 11am, the menú (which was almost certainly basic and cheap) at lunchtime and so on. In villages the bars were the social centre, they were the club, the meeting place, the place where post was delivered, the place where advice was sought. Nowadays it's quite common to see depopulated villages offering the village bar for free to anyone willing to see if they can make a living from it because, without the bar, the village is just some houses.
These posher bars are usually owned by venture capital groups, by a pension fund or maybe they're a franchise operation with a carefully designed image. Naturally there are still individual bars but it's a bit unlikely that the new, enthusiastic and optimistic entrepreneur will set out to produce a bar with formica tables and plastic chairs. The difference of course is that the styled bars are there to make money, to sell you things, whilst the traditional bar might have had that same end aim but it did it with more care, with more sense of belonging, with more feeling for a neighbourhood. So, probably the days of the "old men's bars", a Spanish institution, are numbered. I feel it's our duty to use them as often as we can before time does away with them.
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Just before I go. How many Spanish bars have you ever been in that you might describe as comfy? A handful at most. Until very recently, around here at least, when it got cold, most of them never put on their heating and they'd leave the front door open. The chairs are never comfortable. Even with their considered design the trendy bars will still make you perch on high stools inside while outside, on their terraces, they are perfectly happy to use those plastic chairs, supplied by the brewery, that seem custom made to dig into the soft spot in your back.
“I was there 😊” really enjoyable read Chris
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