SPANISH NIGHTLIFE. OK, SO IT AIN’T STUDIO 54 !

The ‘El Catalan’ bar sits sandwiched between the blue and green wash of the salt flats of Las Salinas and the long sandy beach of Cabo de Gata.

If, like us, you were to pull up alongside, looking across at its weather-beaten, chiaroscuro panels while it waits in silence, shutters down, baking in the afternoon sun, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d found the perfect, peaceful, run-down bar….. The sort of place where, as evening falls, you and the woman/man of your dreams, could return, find a couple of spaces on a salt dusted bench facing the ocean, and listen to the soft, lazy murmur of the waves, sipping  frosted bottles of icy Alhambra beer, willing the day to last just a little longer and dreaming of the days yet to come……

That’s what we thought anyway..

So we drove twenty five kilometers to do just that….

It was still closed……..

Disco Prisma on the other hand, lost in the wild and woolly backstreets of Cartagena, didn’t look half as promising so we gave it a miss…

We’ll probably learn, at some point in the future, that it is one of those hidden gems that you only ever hear about…Where a tired and non-descript door swings open, allowing the cognoscenti access to a glittering world of glamour and spectacle, where dancing girls speak in verse and poets sit rapt at their jeweled feet  while the music of the spheres throbs and grinds to a swamp-rock backbeat…….

As I say, this is what we will probably hear….

But…

We gave it a miss…….

So we’ll never know for sure.

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All Images copyright Stuart Allan Hyde