Author: Leah Pattem
In a quiet residential corner of Carabanchel, the buildings possess a certain quirkiness. I wonder if they were once social housing – perhaps an architect’s chance to turn a modest commission into a portfolio piece, leaving residents with something more ornamental than rational.
The façade carries the colours of the Spanish flag, though deeper, sunnier and warmer somehow. The italic typeface of the bodega is iconic. Inside, the classiness and warmth continues with no excess frills. The bar top is plain wooden Formica, the ceramic wine barrels are the same red as the façade.
A woman asks her dog to smile for the camera. Instead, it gives me a look of concern. The wall behind her is stacked so densely with Mahou crates that it reads like a partition to another room – maybe it is but the crates have been there so long, no one really remembers.
The bar drifts between one-to-one conversations among friends and a larger, collective discussion, with owner Jesús Gómez chairing with smiles and storytelling from behind his bar.
It’s all so no frills but also with a touch of old frills thanks to the cute miniature farming tools mounted high along the walls. A plastic bag of Sunday morning shopping hangs from the coat rack – two baguettes and a shoehorn. It feels rare to see bare hooks. This is the first warm, sunny day in months, and customers have stepped out with little more than the clothes they’re wearing and their keys.
This is one of those true city bodegas that functions first as a shop and then as a bar – though, over time, the bar has become the main event. It feels closer to a social club, or a working men’s club like the ones back in Newcastle where I’m from: somewhere you might stop for a quick drink before the match, or find yourself drowning your sorrows after a funeral with complete strangers who turn out to have known your uncle – they worked together for years and used to drink here together after shift.
Since 1959, through three generations of the same family, Bodegas Calatrava has had no ambition to be anything other than what it is: a true community space, anchored by wine from Ciudad Real, where the abuelo was from. That’s so Madrid.
Bodegas Calatrava
- Address: C. Julia Nebot, 8, Carabanchel
- IG: @bodegascalatrava
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