Café Comercial opened in 1887 at the Glorieta de Bilbao — the circular junction where several of Malasaña's main streets converge — and has operated with varying degrees of institutional solidity since. The café closed in 2015 and reopened in 2017 after a restoration that preserved the essentials: the high ceilings, the marble tabletops, the mirrors that multiply the room, the clock that runs at a speed consistent with the building's pace rather than the city's. It functions as what the Spanish call a tertulias café — a meeting place of a deliberate, unhurried kind, where people come not for reasons of convenience but because the room is the reason. The current coffee programme takes its sourcing seriously without sacrificing the format that makes the café work: the waiters still wear aprons, the cups are still ceramic, and the afternoon light through the Glorieta-facing windows still arrives at the precise angle that the room was designed for.
Malasaña, Madrid, Spain