kevinegperrywritesregularlyforLonelyPlanet
magazine (UK). He one day hopes to visit a bar
that Hemingway didn’t get to first.“Barcelona changes after
dark,” she says. “People get
happier! It’s a very different
atmosphere.”
She knocks the tap off, but overflows with
recommendations for late-night haunts. “The first
cocktail bar in Barcelona is on La Rambla, it’s called
Boadas,” she says. The tiny Art Deco bar has been
an institution since it was opened in 1933 by Miguel
Boadas, the Cuban bartender who arrived in
Barcelona from Havana after leaving his job as
head bartender at El Floridita, another favourite
of Hemingway’s. The second bar Sofia recommends
is Dry Martini which, as the name suggests,
specialises in one cocktail in particular. Behind its
wooden bar sits a slightly incongruous digital
counter that informs me that my drink is precisely
the 10,74,412nd dry martini drunk here since records
began 31 years ago.
1AM One dreads to think what the equivalent
absinthe counter at Bar Marsella would display.
In the small hours, the quiet bar where we started
our journey is packed with bodies and the noise
of a hundred conversations all going on at once and
at ever increasing volume. The hours of darkness
are dwindling, yet even now amid the hubbub,
unsteady hands around the room follow José’s lead.
They each perform the trick with the pricked water
bottles, the sugar cubes and the absinthe, watching
and waiting for the magic to happen.
108 October 2019