And I forgot the ones that put coconut milk in coffee

There can be a fantastic energy to a typical Spanish bar, especially during the mid-morning when people have their breakfast. The main protagonists are the coffee grinder and the coffee machine—one, obviously enough, produces a fierce grinding sound, and the other hisses like the Mallard letting off steam in Waverley Station. Then, of course, there are the people, who rise to the occasion. As a national characteristic, Spaniards are not quiet, and they do like to talk, sometimes quite loudly. So, with all this grinding and gushing going on, the clientele have to raise their voices a tad. And, in an upward spiral other groups at other tables follow suit, and so it goes on until the bar is as noisy as the engine room of the Titanic.

So that is a normal bar: the sort of place you go for a coffee or a beer and some toast, maybe a roll or, if you are in Madrid, churros. It is nothing fancy and just as likely to be on a city street as in a rural village. There was a time, though, when these neighbourhood bars were complemented by something more refined, where the waiters tended to be older men dressed in black trousers and waistcoats, with white shirts and often a bow tie. They carried polished aluminium trays from marble bars to marble-topped tables surrounded by wall-length mirrors. They were noisy too, but the atmosphere was different, and, because they were nearly always in city and town centres, the clientele was much more varied and less local.

Nowadays, neither of these types of bar is quite the norm. The grand marble-and-mirror establishments survive mostly as tourist spots, and the ordinary neighbourhood bar is still there, but it has often had a facelift. The principle is much the same, but there might be a pot plant here or there, and some kind of kitsch decoration—bicycles hanging from the wall or a collection of tin-plate advertising signs for brands and slogans long gone: “OMO adds brightness to whiteness.”

There are also plenty of newer variants—perfectly pleasant places, but a little less distinctive. Lots of them project a healthier image. I was thinking this while sitting in a bar on a Carrefour concourse, waiting for a punctured tyre to be replaced. The café was white and bright, and the small tables were spotless. A man worked quietly on his laptop, and a few couples sat chatting, but nobody raised their voice, nobody wore overalls or a flat cap, and the coffee machine went almost unheard. While the menu still offered the usual fare, it had been modernised: tostas, rolls, and sandwiches came with more elaborate fillings, many involving avocado. You do not find avocado in the bars where old blokes go for a beer, play doms, or wait while their wife makes the Sunday paella.

The Carrefour café is not unique. It simply happened to be the latest example of something increasingly common. Instead of growing out of the neighbourhoods they serve, more and more bars feel as though they have been designed from a manual: lighting to suit the mood, carefully chosen décor, polished surfaces, and menus that look as though they have been assembled by a marketing department rather than a cook. The individuality and quirks of the local watering hole are slowly giving way to a more polished, less rooted version of the same idea.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in the food courts of modern shopping centres. There you will find Popeyes, The Good Burger, McDonald’s and Burger King, all selling hamburgers served on oddly sweet bread—monsters far too thick for even a modern Linda Lovelace to get her lips around. Burgers that disintegrate on impact, sending hot, volcanic, chemical sauces spilling down your clothes as you struggle to eat them. Alongside them sit KFC, Pad Thai, Udon and Chinese woks. Chain Italians such as Gino’s or La Tagliatella are supplemented by any number of pizza chains with bizarre pizzas; anyone for Cali Chicken Bacon Ranch? Obviously these are really eateries rather than bars but the way they have usurped more traditional cuisine is a key to the future.

Even the chains with recognisably Spanish roots have drifted in the same direction. 100 Montaditos began with a wonderfully simple idea: small bread rolls with straightforward fillings—ham, cheese, tuna, and the like. Not any more. We made the mistake of going into one a while ago, and now the fillings seem to consist of oddly engineered chemical combinations that are as difficult to describe as they are to eat. Lizarran survives rather better. Given the surroundings, it is almost reassuring. Their self-service tapas generally contain recognisable food, with different-sized cocktail sticks telling the cashier how much to charge. Even so, they are still part of the same polished, standardised world—a long way from the noisy neighbourhood bars where the coffee grinder drowned out the conversation until the conversation fought back.

So, the next time you're in a strange town, try a bar without a name you recognise. You may find a more authentic experience — food that didn't come out of a packet or a freezer, but was prepared from raw materials by someone in a kitchen