Bosch Bar: 90 years of coffee, conversation, and lobsters

PalmShall we meet at Bosch? It's impossible to keep count of how many times these two 'junquillos' have said it, which is how the inhabitants of Ciutat are known – proudly, they say now. Ninety years ago, in February 1936, this establishment opened its doors, a regular meeting point for residents and visitors; and of which the salchichón, in its sense of a small bread with a groove along its length, has been and is its reference, although in this case with the popular name of langosta (lobster).

"Bar Bosch," wrote the much-missed Maria-Antònia Oliver around 1988, "remained a kind of navel of the city. It was where friends and I met, to then decide what we would do that evening. It was where it seemed obligatory to meet up, back when I lived... at any time of day, you could find someone you knew, if you knew anyone. It was an institution that remained, solid and effective, amidst a world of ever-changing forms."

"All roads lead to Bar Bosch," affirms the writer and journalist Carlos Garrido. "Every city has its crossroads café. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so all the city's paths lead to that place (...) To speak of cafés in Palma is undoubtedly to speak of Bar Bosch. There, the paths of almost all Palma residents converge."

Its location is, certainly, strategic. In a corner of Juan Carlos I Square—everyone calls it "Turtle Square"—the heart of Palma, at least since the 19th century, when the obelisk designed by the Madrid native Isidro González Velázquez was inaugurated, supported by the turtles that have given this space its popular name. Next to it is Can Brondo Street, the end of the slope leading down from Cort, from the upper city to the lower city.

Obviously, the Bosch district is now part of the lower town, and centuries ago, water flowed through it, water that occasionally resurfaces. This is what happened in 1962: a photograph shows waiters with brooms and desolate expressions, and customers in the doorway, unable to cross the street, which is being furiously flooded by the torrent of accumulated rainwater.

A scene straight out of a crime novel

El Bosch has also served as a setting for crime novels. In Antipodes, a story by the aforementioned Maria-Antònia Oliver, starring her researcher Lònia Guiu, or a Appointment in Belgrade, narration by Antoni Serra with his investigator Celso Mosqueiro: "Mosqueiro, from the taser of the Bosch bar -the only moving point in the middle of the spectral and silent city- contemplated the humid solitude of the fountain of the Turtles and sipped the espé coffee.

"Without cafés and newspapers, it would be difficult to travel," wrote Albert Camus, and he did so after his visit to Mallorca: "A place where, at night, we try to interact with other men, allows us (...) to represent the man we are at home." It's impossible that Camus stopped at the Bosch, because he was in the Balearic Islands in the summer of 1935, and the Bosch bar opened in February 1936. It was opened by Jaume Bosch Coves—hence the name—who knew the restaurant world well because he had been the chef at the Gran Hotel, which is now the CaixaForum Palma.

On the upper floor of the Bosch, according to Garrido, "the intense social life of postwar bars unfolded. Card games, discussions, social clubs." Back then, social media didn't exist; socializing had to be done in person. Around the 1950s, it was a meeting place for chess enthusiasts and the setting for their games.

The Bosch was also linked to some episodes of the democratic opposition to Franco's regime. Specifically, the failed editorial board, which, from the illegal left, had tried to take control of the magazine. LucasAmong them, Antoni Serra and Josep Maria Llompart, met at Bosch "in the early hours," Serra recounts, to draft a letter of protest "which, naturally, the newspapers didn't publish." In March 1975, the prominent opposition figure Antoni Tarabini was arrested nearby. In those same seventies, after almost forty years at the helm, Jaume Bosch sold the bar and his family business to Onofre Flexas, whose family has carried it on to the present day. Initially, Joan Suau, who recently passed away, was also a partner. Seeing them both behind the bar, ready to take on the challenge, was a common sight for the clientele. In April 1984, two then-young journalists, Fernando Merino (text) and Joan Miquel Ferrà (photographs), undertook a real challenge: spending 'Twelve Hours in Bar Bosch', What was the title of the report they published in Balearic Islands DayThey lived through, and recounted, Merino recalls, all the phases of the day: the morning coffee of the workers and politicians, later the aperitif of the bourgeoisie, and then the beers of the young people as evening fell – this idea of ​​'evening' apparently already existed, although it wasn't called that. And some curious visitors, like the actor Ismael Merlo, who was performing at the Principal Theatre at that time.

"At first you're just observing," Merino recounts. "But there comes a point when the Bosch absorbs you: you're not observing it, you're inside it." That report was a landmark in Mallorcan journalism and "helped consolidate," notes its author, this new Bosch of Flexas and Suau as the quintessential meeting point of Palma.

"Like, what, eat a lobster?"

Everyone has been to this bar. The painter Joan Miró used to come in for a coffee every afternoon. His grandson David was also a regular, whom José Carlos Llop remembers as "quickly scratching his hair out of the corner of his eye and lowering his head, gesturing." Among those who have left dedications are the racing driver Niki Lauda, ​​the boxer Alfredo Evangelista, the astronaut Pedro Duque, the footballer Miquel Àngel Nadal, the singer Chenoa, the actress Sara Montiel, the Valldemossa family, the artist Miquel Barceló, and the actors Simó Andreu and Xesc. They say that Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State, was there, and that a regular customer joked, "How come he's come to the same place as me?"

The proximity of two theaters, the Principal and the now-demolished Rialto, and Mallorca's frequent use as a film set, has meant that many people from the entertainment world who have come from elsewhere have visited the Bosch: Fernando Fernán Gómez, Don Juan Fernando Javier Escrivá, Pepe Martín, Jaime Blanch, Imanol Arias, Lorenzo Quinn, Tricicle – who coined the neologism 'boschatas, the best in Palma' – and María Luisa San José, who left a dedication stating that "Onofre and Joan have the best lobsters." The actor Jordi Mollà sat on the terrace to perform a variety show and improvised a drawing.

Because, since we started talking about lobsters, we must remember that Bosch's star dish is one of those rolls, well toasted and rubbed with tomato, with various fillings – although the classic is ham and cheese – and which everyone knows as a 'lobster'. A name as disconcerting as the expression on the faces of those who come from abroad and sit down at its tables for the first time, when they are told that they will be treated to a lobster – has this good man won the lottery?

The pinkish color that the Bosch's longuetes (small, thick slices of bread) take on with the tomato, "perhaps the tastiest in Palma," according to Sebastià Alzamora, is said to be the origin of this curious name. One of the waiters is believed to have coined the expression. The long-time waiters of El Bosch were a true institution. Dealing with them was to learn a lesson in stoicism and Mallorcan spirit: "Yes, the order will come suddenly, you wouldn't want it, my son, not like that, why would you?"

The geographer and writer Climent Picornell describes the Bosch's heterogeneous clientele on any given day like this: "The broker "from a major bank," three rabid conservatives, two discreet girls who look like sisters, the flamboyant regulars at the bar, politicians from Menorca... "Like Roy, from Blade RunnerI can paraphrase, 'I've seen things in Bosch bar, beyond Orion, that humans wouldn't believe, like architects booing because of their cell phones or Mallorca coaches—Víctor, with Pichi—making their lineups.' Yes, Bosch is a whole universe. May it remain so for many years to come.

Information prepared from texts by Carlos Garrido, Valentí Puig, Clemente Picornell, José Carlos Llop, Sebastià Bennasar, Maria Antònia Oliver and Antoni Serra, the testimony of Fernando Merino, the newspapers Última Hora, Diario de Mallorca and El Día de Baleares and the group Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca (FAM).