But How Was The Food And Drink?

 

Una Grande Libre reads the sign above the entrance to a bar-restaurant in Madrid’s Usera neighbourhood. This was Francisco Franco’s motto for Spain – one, great, free – and it is accompanied by a large portrait of the dictator superimposed on to the window.The exteriors of El Cangrejo in Ciudad Real and Casa Pepe in Despeñaperros are a little bit more subtle, but not much: decorated ostentatiously in the red and yellow of the Spanish flag. The accompanying historical symbols on display, such as the yoke and arrows of the Falange and the Eagle of San Juan, remove any doubt: the year is 2026 and you have encountered one of Spain’s network of bars and restaurants that proudly glorify Franco and his dictatorship.

*shrugs* 

These unsettling and unusual places tell a vivid story about the unique way that Spain deals with its past – or fails to. They seem all the more confusing in the context of Pedro Sánchez’s recent historical memory legislation, and beg the question: how do these places still exist?

Mayne because they serve delicious food? 

Looking at the letter of the law, you can’t help but wonder how they have been able to continue operating so brazenly. The Democratic Memory Law requires the removal of any symbols that glorify the dictatorship or its protagonists from spaces “with public access”, which would include bars and restaurants.

The reality of its implementation, lawyer Eduardo Ranz tells me, is very different: “Under this law, it’s only the Ministry of Democratic Memory that has the ability to open an inquiry against these places. What I don’t understand is why, in these last four years, they have not done so, despite these establishments breaking this law. Removing these Francoist symbols is one of the government’s most important unresolved issues.”

Well, that's understandable, spain does after all have far more pressing concerns. 

Despite the many setbacks faced by the historical memory movement – most recently, the overturning of a €10,001 fine levelled at the Falange for its public tributes to its founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera – there have been some advances in the wake of the 2022 legislation.

But the trend is ever rightwards in Spanish politics for much the same reasons as elsewhere.

Spain’s network of Francoist restaurants and bars is a continual, real-world reminder of this. So until something changes, you will still be able to see a 2-metre tall picture of the Spanish dictator proudly displayed in a restaurant window in the nation’s capital.

'But will I get a decent paella and a good gutsy red there?', is the question most tourists will have.

When Your Restaurant Review Comes With A Side Order...

...of diversity fawning:

Some restaurants are just a nice place to go for dinner. Yemen Heaven in York is obviously that. You will eat well there.

That's it, Jay, that's all that's needed, right? Recommendations for where to take the little ladie or genrtleman for a nice Valentines Day meal? 

But the restaurant is more than that.

Oh. Clearly not.  

Much like Arabic Flavour in Aberystwyth, which I visited last year, it is both the story of exile and an act of memory. It is the product of one woman’s determination to maintain her family’s traditions; to free the country of her birth from a single narrative of war and hardship, however overwhelming that narrative might seem right now.

*sigh* Anyone else just go to a restaurant to eat some great food and not have washing up afterwards? I do. History and current geopolitical affairs are for the telly afterwards. 

Muna Al-Maflehi was born in Taiz, a brown stone city in the highlands of southwestern Yemen, known before the current civil war for its quality coffee production and for the abundant citrus fields with which it is surrounded. When she was seven, Muna moved with her family to Saudi Arabia, where her father taught her the dishes his father had cooked for him. It was a way of keeping alive a connection to the country and culture they had left behind. In 2013, looking for a better life, she moved with her five children to live near Salzburg. There she started her first food-delivery business before, in 2017, following close relatives to York.

So she’s moved around a lot. Why? 

The plan was always to open a restaurant, but it’s never easy; harder still for those who are newly arrived. Eventually, they found an old pub, the Spread Eagle on Walmgate, in need of custodians and love. The wood-panelling and parquet is still there, and so is the bar, though beaten copper teapots now stand upon it. Otherwise, the space has been carefully papered and polished, and rubber plants strategically placed. According to the blackboard on the pavement by the front door, there is now a “secret Mediterranean garden” for smoking shisha out back.

Just what’s needed, I suppose. Say, why aren’t the usual suspects complaining about this? Why does she get a pass? 

Shortly before they were due to open, at the end of 2021, the newly decorated restaurant was broken into and ripped apart by vandals who splattered the walls with paint. “It was like a bomb had just hit it,” Muna told the York Press at the time, despairingly. “It was like being in the war in Yemen. I couldn’t believe that this had happened in the UK.”

Obviously the war in Yemen was a fairly tame affair!

But the community wanted the restaurant. A crowdfunder was launched. More than £21,000 was raised. Yemen Heaven opened and it remains very much a family affair.

Well, if 'the community' wanted it, they got it. But which 'community' was it, I wonder?