Spain’s Smalltown Bartenders

Cocktails and big capitals are two peas in a pod. The focus on big cities is understandable: those are the most accessible, cosmopolitan, open and best-connected metropolises. Those are the places industry people visit, for food, for culture, for tourism. You could launch ten amazing bars in Birmingham and people would still flock first and foremost to London. That’s just the way it is. But a great cocktail scene is measured by the number of excellent bars outside the main cities. By that yardstick, Spain is really doing well. The country is lucky in that it has two cocktail capitals in Madrid and Barcelona. However, they’re increasingly the (arguably very big) trees that hide the forest.

Places such as Palma, Malaga, Valladolid and Zaragoza are now worth the detour, and there are also exciting bars in many more cities, small and big.

The reasons for this are varied: some of those places are receiving high end tourism, which drive demand for unique concepts, others are counting on individual entrepreneurship creating a local trend while other cases are just impossible to explain… But let’s try with a quick tour of Spain’s great cocktail bars off the international grid.

Mallorca and Balearic

Off the international grid, the Mediterranean islands are not. Off the cocktail grid, they were although they’re a magnet for tourism (with the main island, Mallorca, attracting 12 million visitors a year), for the longest time the only mixed drink you could find was a sangria, and not a very good one at that.

Today, though, Palma, Mallorca’s capital, boasts half a dozen excellent bars, including one rated with two stars by Top Cocktail Bars, a Michelin-style listing for Portuguese and Spanish cocktail bars. This change was initially driven by Mati Iriarte and the team behind Ginbo, a gin-focused bar that decided to upgrade their cocktail game a decade ago.

After initial success, they launched a second venue, Chapeau 1987, where they wanted to engage in a dialogue between cocktails and Mallorcan culture. This they achieved using local ingredients and open-ended exchange, for inspiration, with the island’s artists or food and wine producers.

And last year, deep in the basement of Ginbo, they opened Sala de Personal a lab-cum-restaurant-cum-bar where a select few patrons come each week to discover an ever-rotating omakase experience.

This is a story of never resting on one’s laurel and always looking for ways to improve. Iriarte and team’s drive has, it could be argued, inspired others within the local hospital industry to demand more from themselves. The latest local sensation is Agabar, a bar with an agave focus. Other islands are also seeing progress: in Ibiza, far from the clichés of the typical club experience, Overall offers an intricate food and drinks program that owes both to their owners’ experience in Singapore and to the keen observation of the latest trends in cities such as London.

Andalucia

Another very touristy region that hasn’t been graced with great drinking holes. But the transformation of Malaga into a cultural tourism powerhouse and a technology hub has completely changed the game. Better restaurants, better bars: this is becoming the place to be. Five or six years ago, Elias Bentolila was the only one to try and offer quality mixed drinks at his small, jazzy Speakeasy in nearby Fuengirola. The changes in Malaga led him to open a similar concept, called The Pharmacy, in the center of the city. But with Marbella literally down the road (where one increasingly finds balanced cocktails, we are told), high volume and high intensity spots were inevitably required.

Chester & Punk is one of those: every night of the week it’s packed to the rafters with people attracted by loud music, the prospect of dancing and gin & tonics (Spain remains Spain, in that respect).

However, most end up ordering cocktails because, well, they’re just sensational. Built on recognizable classics with a subtle twists, the drinks thought up by Sebas Oliva and team are perfectly balanced (pro tip: the house Daiquiri may be the best in the country).

Further west, Sevilla is still struggling —a shame for such a big, storied, intensely visited city— but this too might be changing:

Naked & Famous, recently opened by creative director Cisco Rodriguez (who used to work at La Tuerta in Madrid), is bringing a new, playful and colourful approach to cocktail a few metres away from the world-famous cathedral. Down south, things are looking good!

Valladolid

The heart of Spain’s wine country —Valladolid is in the centre of Ribeira del Duero, one of Spain’s better known wine DOs— is not the natural place for a healthy cocktail scene. If this is changing, this is mostly down to headstrong Juan Valls who has, almost singlehandedly, turned the spotlight on his small corner of the world.

Valls opened El Niño Perdido, his industry-leading cocktail bar ten years ago. He quickly turned it into one of the most interesting places in the mixed drink world, with mind boggling menus and creative drinks with a focus on produce. But it’s not always easy to grow in national stature when people visit your city in search of another style of booze.

Much in keeping with the “if you build it, they will come” ethos, Valls is also behind FIBAR, Spain’s premier bar show, held in Valladolid itself. So, Valladolid has become a sort of New Orleans: a once a year pilgrimage destination for the cocktail community.

This has obviously benefited El Niño Perdido but also created opportunities for other operations, such as Amor Amargo or The Bowie. Valls also runs a second bar, called Cul de Sac, with a focus on modernist classics and champagnes.

And the rest…

By area, Spain is the European Union’s second biggest country. So there are bound to be many regions with exciting bars on top of the three we chose to highlight. Up north in Asturias, Gijon’s Varsovia overlooks the Cantabrian Sea, offering one of the loveliest views of any bar in the world. Far, far down south, the Canary Islands are also upping their game with hotels realizing the potential of great cocktails. Big things are expected of Suru, in Gran Canaria, and Maresia Atlantic Bar in Tenerife. But having a sea view is not indispensable.

Zaragoza, bang in between Barcelona and Madrid, has Moonlight, a self-styled ‘experimental’ bar where every drink seems to be the bartenders’ attempt to answer questions such as ‘What would the world’s oldest cocktail taste like’? Heady stuff playfully done.

Above all, an invitation to expand your horizon. Which is also what we’re trying to do with this piece: convince you that there are cocktails well worth thinking off the beaten track. What are you waiting for? ———— The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Freepour.