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LAVAPIES:
THE SECRET NIGHT OF LA CANDELA,
page 2
By Jaed
Muncharoen Coffin
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ONE PLACE IN PARTICULAR...that
caters to a late night crowd is a bar called
Candela. If you walk up Calle Olivar
from the Lavapies metro stop plaza, you'll find
the salmon colored walls of Candela at the top of
the hill where Calle Olivar meets Calle del Olmo.
You can't miss it: you'll hear clapping
flamenco rhythms, wailing flamenco voices, and
strumming flamenco chords the whole way up Calle
Olivar. The friendly Candela crowd will
be out in the street. When you descend through
the narrow doorway, you'll pass a shiny headed
bouncer who may give you a hard look which you
shouldn't take too seriously. If there's an
open table inside the narrow bar – which
there probably won't be, and if there is, you're
there too early! – sit and watch as the
strange spirit of flamenco rises up in dim light
from the black and white checkers of the floor to
the vaulted stucco arches of the ceiling.
The walls of La Candela are covered with
autographed photos of Flamenco artists,
bullfighters, and antique flamenco
concert posters. The owner of the bar plays
strictly flamenco, and the patrons love it. They
clap to complex rhythms of the music, and as the
night carries on, some elegant woman will rise
and turn and dance in the middle of the floor.
And then a man might join her, and soon the whole
bar is twirling their fingers in inward-turning
and blossoming hand gestures. |
Keep a subtle eye out for a
small and slight dark haired man who sits by himself
against the wall with his legs crossed. There
will be a solitary bottle of beer at his table and a
small basket of potato chips. He is mysterious
and awkward and perhaps a bit crazy, but
occasionally he may stand up and begin dancing. When he
does, all eyes turn to him, and he stomps and clicks and
snaps to unanimous cheer. When he is done, he sits down,
sips his beer and eats a potato chip, and acts as if
nothing had ever happened.
And the best, most authentic
flavor of the bar Candela, you will never, ever, see. In
the back toward the bathrooms is a small doorway leading
down a hall to a separate room. Occasionally you'll see
gypsy-looking fellows pass through the small hallway,
carrying guitar cases on their back, dressed in smart
black blazers and jeans, their long dark hair in
ponytails. And when the music in the bar comes to
an occasional stop, a muffled sound of passionate singing
voices, the tak tak tak rhythms of clapping, and the
passionate strumming of flamenco guitar will consume the
short interim. You might wonder “what's
going on back there?” and walk back to check it out.
You'll soon realize that it's not the place for the
occasional tourist or even the Lavapies local.
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The word on the street is that the
owner reserves his back room for some of the best
Flamenco musicians and dancers in Madrid
– known and unknown. At the end of the night
– at five am perhaps? -- as you leave the
bar, walk down Calle del Olivar just fifteen
yards, and soon you'll hear, coming
through the barred windows of the back room, the
most authentic and pure sound in the Lavapies
night: it's the gypsies strumming and
stomping and dancing and clapping to their very
own flamenco from “la cueva” (the cave)
of Candela . |
| Below the window, mysteriously tiled
into the brick with subtle stonework, is
ambiguously written “Candela Flamenco”.
If you sit outside the window, you can listen to
the most beautiful music you'll never see. The
singing voices wind through the narrow
cobblestone streets of Lavapies until sunrise. |
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Be grateful that there are places where
tourists are not allowed to enter. You can walk
right up to the edge of it and listen in through the ivy
covered windows, but you'll never get to see it. There
is no reservation to be made or ticket to buy. It
may be the one time in your life when a feeling of
exclusivity is welcome. And then the night in
Lavapies comes to a slow and stumbling end. If at some
point during your stay in Madrid, you wander through
Lavapies during the light of day, you may find yourself
looking at the small pebbles tiled into the dirty salmon
walls of a superficially derelict Candela. You'll
recall the late night of before, the gypsy voices and the
patters of clapping, and surely you'll say: “and
who would ever think! That sound came from this
place!” And that's the tricky spirit of
Lavapies: a diverse neighborhood that is wonderfully,
gratefully, and hospitably closed to all interested
tourists.
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