Behind bars in Cerdanyola

There's a thought-provoking post over at Leftbanker talking about the walk-up window/service hatch that you see in many Spanish bars. It's true that this is a feature that seems definitively Spanish and certainly seems to fit with the idea of a life lived in the street: on summer evenings, you can just walk up to get your Voll Damm and drink it in the street with your mates.

But there don't seem to be many of those bars around here. To my mind, they seem more common in 'the South', and I remember seeing loads of them in Ciudad Real (most beautiful city in the world) and Seville. One in C.R. was recommended to us for having 'excellent tapas'. It didn't. How is it that Spaniards, who should really know about that kind of thing, can so frequently give crap recommendations when it comes to food? We asked a well-dressed woman in Cordoba for a 'locals' restaurant where we could get a decent meal. She directed us to this promising-looking place that had about two things on the menu. I had a plate of lamb kidneys. Not that bad, but really not excellent either. They didn't even serve coffee!

Our street is fairly typical in that it has three bars on it. Unfortunately for me (or maybe it's a good thing), they are the worst bars in western Europe. One is a Betis (Seville) football club supporters' bar called La Giralda which serves OK sandwiches. They show football games on their TV and whenever anyone scores a goal against Barça, the entire bar erupts in applause. Next up is the bar under my house, called Bar Los Caballos which is essentially a social club and watering hole for the many construction workers employed by the building firm also under my house. Actually, this isn't such a bad place: the regulars are OK and you see the builders playing chess quite a lot, which is pretty cool. They do no food but they do have a tobacco machine.

Finally, there's Bar Lastri. This is one of those places that defies understanding. It's a large, high-ceilinged square room, more or less devoid of decoration (save the obligatory TV, small and high-mounted, always tuned to Antena 3) and painted a ghastly turquoise-green. The clientele seems to consist exclusively of miserable, sour-mouthed, middle aged women and their nasty, alcoholic husbands. Everyone in there smokes constantly but the tobacco machine doesn't actually accept coins, so you have to exchange your money for tokens at the bar. This process normally takes about 10 minutes to complete because unless you walk up to the bar and scream, the barmaids will do better than any other server I've witnessed in Spain to ignore you (and that is some feat). I don't know whether they do food but I imagine that if they do, it would be utterly disgusting and served with a grimace.

As I hinted earlier on, it's actually quite a good thing that none of the bars on my street are places I'd like to frequent. Cerdanyola does have a few good bars: Bar Grau is a real classic, serving decent sandwiches, mediocre bravas and operating as the official FC Barcelona supporters bar, the headquarters of the Cerdanyola Chess Club, the Domino Club and the Pipesmokers' Association. Taberna del Tio Tom ("Tom's Bar" as we call it) is a really nice bar too. Kind of dark and cold inside, the service is laconic but friendly, the Voll Damms are cheap and they play blues and rock'n'roll constantly. They also screen movies with a projector sometimes, and play host to a guy who dresses like a Teddy Boy, complete with boots, sideburns and a tattoo on his arm that says "50's" in case you didn't guess that he loves the 1950's.