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A PORTRAIT OF
El Pimpi, Malaga
Classic venues with a colourful past
Every city has one, a legendary 'local’ that’s attracted the great, the good and the outrageously bad over the decades and still stands tall to tell the tales. The kind of place that wears its lively past on its faded walls – just like Malaga’s El Pimpi writes Samantha Lee
Most people who fly into Pablo Ruiz Picasso airport head straight for the Costa del Sol. Sun- starved and stressed, all they want to do is laze on the beach and chill out for the duration. What a shame, because nine kilometres to the east, heading away from the tourist enclaves of Fuengirola and Torremolinos, is Malaga.
Tucked between the mountains and the Med the provincial capital is a little jewel of a city. With its wide tree-line boulevards, bustling port, long crescent of beach (as pretty as, though less pricey than, Cannes’ Croisette), fashionable shops and cascading fountains. A museum, numerous parks, varied restaurants and tapas bars,
makes it cosmopolitan of a human scale. Most of the centre and old town is now pedestrianised, and the climate perfectly compliments the street-life that is very much part of the culture.
The walls are lined
by snapshots of the
great and the good
who’ve visited the
tavernaLess than a kilometre away you can visit the Alcazaba, a palace set high up overlooking the bay on one side and the metropolis on the other and the Gibrafaro, its military stronghold and look-out point that alerted the town against invasion. Also nearby is the recently unearthed Roman amphitheatre, the Picasso museum, the Casa Natal (a beautifully restored house where the painter was born), the Arab baths, Calla Larios (Malaga’s equivalent of Paris’ Rue de St Honore), the Bishop’s Palace and a 14th-century gothic Cathedral.Right in the centre of all this largesse, comfortably available to rest tired feet and slake parched throats is the oldest 'sala de fiestas’ in the region- El Pimpi.
Everybody who is anybody has been to El Pimpi. Bullfighter 'El Cordobes’, (the sixties heart-throb known in his time as the 'beatle of the bullring’). Film star Antonio Banderas is a regular visitor, his family still live in the capital and along with his wife Melanie and daughter Stella Carmen, he spends two months every summer at his house 'La Gaviotta’ on Marbella’s golden mile. And the King himself, Don Juan Carlos who, arriving with Queen Sofia in the Royal Yacht to open the adjacent Picasso Museum on an particularly wet day, popped in to escape the rain.
The Calle Granada
entrance, just off
Plaza MercedHoused in the historic building which began life as a convent, El Pimpi oozes authentic Andulacian charm. The present owner, Don Francisco Campos, plans to keep it that way. A distinguished septuagenarian, he has owned the establishment since the early 1960s when the tourist boom was just beginning. Things were very different then.
“When I came to Malaga in the 1950s there were at least half a dozen locales like this” he explains. “One by one they’ve been modernised, now we are the only one left. The last example of the traditional taverna”.
Everything about El Pimpi smacks of the traditional, right down to the double entrance (the front of Calle Granada, just off the Plaza Merced, the back opposite the Albeniz cinema and the Roman amphitheatre in the Calla Alcazabilla). In more lawless times, this set up allowed the less honest elements of society to beat a hasty retreat at the approach of enraged creditors in pursuit of payment that was being squandered on wine, women and song. Nowadays the clientele is slightly more salubrious and ranges from students in their twenties through extended families to members of the Malaguenean smart set.
The main bar
with its lively
decorated wallsAs for the name, the dictionary definition lists a Pimpi as 'a woodland sprite’. But in local argot it was the title given to those enterprising young lads who used to sell trinkets to visiting sailors or cruise passengers, darting like imps between liners and merchant shipping, hawking their wares from small skiffs.
Inside the atmosphere is heavily Andalucian, from the bull’s head in the entrance hall, to the original azulejos (the blue and white wall-tiles), to the uneven stone floors. Climbing plants cover the ceiling of the indoor patio. Barrels of Malaga wine line the main seating area. There is even a 'tertulia’ room where Malaga’s creative element- artists, writers, actors and painters- hold regular soirees. And in May the entrance hall exhibits a May Cross, constructed entirely from flowers. A
tribute to the coming of spring which dates back to a pagan past.
The building itself is surprisingly large, opening up and back from a deceptively narrow doorway in Calle Granada, (next to 'Entrecuadros’ a chi- chi boutique selling deliciously collectable objets d’arte) into an entrance hall, welcomingly cool on a hot Summer’s evening. Upstairs, the long bar is covered with signed photographs of famous stars and high society members who have enjoyed Don Francisco’s hospitality. Everyone from Paloma Picasso, the artist’s jewellery- designing daughter, to the Duchess of Alba, whose ancestress posed nude for Goya’s painting “The Naked Maja” has visited. The Duchess holds more than 40 titles, glories in the name Caeyatana Fitz-James Stewart and reputedly has more blue blood in her veins than all the crowned heads of Europe put together. Tucked in a corner, amongst all these portraits of the great and the good is a shot of British PM Tony Blair, grinning like Cheshire cat.
The indoor patio boasts a small but quaint area of half a dozen tables and a tiny drinking fountain. Upstairs is the Palomar, where most of the cultural offerings of the sala take place. Pimpi has always been famous for its flamenco and unlike many other places in the region, they still offer the genuine article, as opposed to the type watered down for tourist consumption.
Everyone from Paloma Picasso
to the Duchess of Alba has visited
A cosy room lined with barrels and decorated with bullfight posters dating from the turn of the last century forms the main body of the downstairs level. This area holds about 60 people when it’s full, which is the case most evenings from 10pm onwards.
Although not a restaurant El Pimpi does offer tapas. Tablas (round wooden platters) of ham, cheese and chorizo cost between €6-8. Other tasty snacks include ligeritos, oval rolls stuffed with an inventive variety of fillings, pringa (meat, ham and black pudding), and Campesino (avocado and anchovies) all served with crunchy 'patatas’.
So, a perfect place to start or end the evening, or to pop into at any time of the day should the mood take you.
El Pimpi, 62 Calle Granada, Malaga; Open: 11am-4am Mon-Sat, 7pm-4am Mondays.
- La Pepica 6, Playa de Levante, Valencia, tel: +34 963 710 366, www.lapepica.com Originally a beach shack on Malvarrosa Beach, this family run institution dates back to 1898. Star diners include Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway. Go for the fabulous paella.
24, Sant Rafael Estafeta,
Barcelona, tel: +34 93 441 3014 This traditional fish and seafood restaurant in the heart of El Raval opened in 1939 and is run by the founder’s grand-daugher. Frequented by intellectuals, literati (Manuel Vazquez Montalban, Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and the occasional rock star.
Place du General de Gaulle, St. Paul de Vence, nr. Nice, tel: +33 (0)4 93 32 80 02 Famous haunt of artists Matisse, Miro and Picasso, who sold their art in exchange for a room and gourmet French food. Nowadays you’re just as likely to spot Bono or Sean Connery taking it easy Provençal style.
86 Via Condotti, Rome, tel: +39 06 678 5474 Dating back to 1760, this café just off the Spanish Steps has hosted everyone from poets Keats and Shelley to Buffalo Bill and Richard Wagner. It remains popular with VIPs and wealthy Romans today.
Piazza IX Aprile, Taormina, Sicily, tel: +39 0942 625 302 Hilltop Café bar popular with stage and screen glitterati. American playwright Tennessee Williams introduced the Hollywood elite, Gregory Peck, Cary, Grant, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton all loved to sip a martini whilst gazing out over the Med.
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