The Mystery of Spain's Chinese Bars
A large number of Spain's most traditional local tapas bars are now run by members of the Chinese community. Why?
Spain has more bars per head of population than any other EU country - in 2017, there was one bar for every 137 people. Spain’s bars aren’t just places to get drunk in (though you can do so easily and cheaply). In the mornings they serve breakfast - toast with tomato or oil, or a croissant - to folks about to start work, which they can then wash down with coffee. Later they’ll serve you a bocadillo - Spain’s signature giant sandwich - for your mid-morning snack, and then for lunch, a full three-course meal, reasonably priced, before transforming into rowdy tapas bars in the evening.
Above, the popular Bocadillo de tortilla - a satisfying potato omelette sandwich
In larger cities, especially Barcelona and Valencia, many of these traditional bars are now run by Chinese families. Spanish people are fine with this, and enjoy their coffee and bocadillos whoever makes them. The Chinese woman who runs the bar will greet Spanish old ladies with a cheery ‘¡Hola guapa!’ and engage in fluent Spanish patter, before switching into Mandarin to shout an order to her husband in the kitchen. The phenomenon is striking because everything else about these bars is so deeply and authentically Spanish, and few people seem to know why they have ended up being run by Chinese immigrants and their children.
Outside these neighbourhood bars and the Bazar Chinos - the incredibly useful import shops run exclusively by Chinese families - Spain’s large Chinese community is almost invisible. This is a result of how recently most of them arrived here.
Above, Dong, the owner of a Bazar Chino in Valladolid. Picture from Tribuna Valladolid
In the UK, due to the links created by empire, there were over 12,000 people of Chinese and Hong Kong origin living in the country by 1951. In Spain, it took until the turn of the millennium to get to this level. Since then, the number of registered Chinese citizens in Spain has risen to ten times what it was 20 years ago, to over 200,000, and there are possibly thousands more who aren’t official residents. This rapid and recent rise goes some way to explain the lack of integration.
A lack of integration leads to a lack of understanding. I’ve heard many theories for why Chinese people are here and why they only seem to run bars and shops - both realistic and not. Let’s focus on two of them.
One theory I heard from a colleague at work was that the Chinese government encouraged people to emigrate to Spain to run businesses. They would help them monetarily - even buying the bars and shops for them. This would benefit China because the Chinese citizens would remain loyal to Chinese interests rather than Spanish ones.
In March, the theory that these small businesses are actually run from China seemingly received a boost when the majority of them suddenly closed without warning. It was Monday the 9th of March, five days before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the national lockdown which would keep us in our homes for a month and a half. We were living life as normal - most of us oblivious to the approaching tragedy. But not the Chinese.
An eerie article in Catalunya’s El Periódico from the 11th of March detailed how residents of Fort Pienc in Barcelona awoke to find almost 20 businesses, all Chinese, had closed for ‘holidays’ of between two weeks and a month. Passers-by sensed it was actually because of the virus and had a hunch that the closures had something to do with the Chinese authorities. So the newspaper asked China’s Deputy Consul General in Barcelona, who said they had no idea about it.
The truth was that Spain’s Chinese community knew from their relatives back in China how serious the disease was and couldn’t believe how relaxed things were in Spain. So they closed voluntarily to protect themselves and their customers. Chinese government intervention was never necessary.
Throughout the dark days of March and April, hospitals in large cities which lacked PPE benefited from donations of masks, hand gel and gloves from the Chinese community. Paco Qiang, delivering masks to hospitals in Madrid, told El PaÃs: ‘No one person started to organise it, we all thought the same thing and started to help, in groups or alone. It’s a common idea, to help.’
The second theory, told to me by a Spanish barman, is that Chinese families took advantage of the economic crash in 2008 to buy bars which were going out of business. ‘They made a very smart decision,’ he told me. ‘They kept the food and decor exactly as it was under Franco, and that’s why people like it.’ He has a point - though it’s not uncommon to find fried noddles and Jiaozi on the menu beside the Spanish staples.
Above, Yan Lin and Qiu working at their bar in Barcelona
An article in the El Comidista magazine details how it wasn’t just the crash which pushed bars into Chinese hands, but also the ageing of the previous proprietors and unwillingness of younger Spaniards to take them on. A generational gap had opened up. At the same time, traditional Chinese businesses - Asian restaurants and Bazars - were reaching saturation point, resulting in the community looking for new opportunities. This opportunity was on every street corner. Chinese families took the bars over, saving them from closure. The new owners have made a huge effort to make them profitable, working from dawn until well past dusk while keeping the prices low enough that anyone can sit down and enjoy a caña. A minority of Spaniards seek to ignore this effort, and instead explain away their success by claiming that the government exempts Chinese businesses from tax. There is no evidence for that.
They have also gone to great efforts to learn and perfect the Spanish tapas recipes. I’ve heard Spanish friends say, semi-seriously, that the Chinese-owned bars don’t make a good tortilla de patatas, but I’ve yet to see that proven. The same El Comidista article lovingly describes the exquisite seafood tapas its author consumed along with a great Cava in a Barcelona bar owned by a Chinese couple.
The third part of their success is the effort they have made to learn what it means to own a neighbourhood bar in Spain. The importance of the personal relationship with customers, and the flamboyant warmth (‘¡Hola guapa! ¿Qué te pongo?’) with which they address them, is not a way in which everyone in China would be used to acting. We should be grateful to Chinese people, and Spaniards of Chinese origin, for helping to make sure that tapas culture remains strong in Spain and that the classic, unpretentious Spanish bar has survived against the wave of gentrification and chains from which many parts of Europe have suffered.
Above, the menu outside one of my local Chinese-run bars in Valencia
It hasn’t all been easy for Chinese people in Spain. There are Spaniards who claim Chinese businesses are mostly fronts for money-laundering and human-trafficking, run by the Triads - the Chinese mafia. There is a smidge of truth in this - there are Triads in Spain, and they do smuggle people into the country, as they do all over Europe, often to work in cannabis farms. In 2012, a crime ring of 83 people was arrested in Operation Emperor. 58 of them were Chinese. They were charged with forgery, money-laundering, people-smuggling, prostitution on drug smuggling among other offences. For a while, this had a terrible impact on attitudes toward Chinese people in Spain, as normal shop and bar owners suffered from being tarred with the same brush. But while elements of these racist attitudes have lingered, things have mostly died down.
The Chinese citizens who arrived twenty years ago are now having children here. They speak fluent Spanish, go to Spanish schools, and in some cases learn English from me. Young people like these are part of Spanish society, not a separate, parallel Chinese one - and no doubt their involvement in Spanish life will soon stretch far beyond their parents’ tapas bars.
