THE SPAIN ATTRACTION
Everyone seems to be traveling or moving to Madrid, Mallorca or Barcelona. What's all the excitement about? The Ws get the scoop from several favorite insiders; one of them even shares a wet dream.
MEMORIES OF MADRID (GW) In 2002 I moved from Brooklyn to Madrid with my then boyfriend (now husband) who was working for Fiat. I had been taking flamenco lessons in mid-town NYC for several years so I was pretty sure I was ready to take on Spain. I imagined wearing my flamenco skirts around Plaza del Sol and hanging out surrounded by musicians playing Spanish guitar. (These are the kind of earnest and naive thoughts one had pre-screens and social media). Needless to say upon arriving in Madrid and after slowly walking backwards out of a professional flamenco dance studio (I was like someone arriving from Europe to a version of the school in Manhattan’s LaGuardia performing school in the 1980s film Fame, wearing a cowboy hat and chaps). I quickly realized my mistake. Meanwhile, our cool loft-style apartment off of Gran Via was located on a street auspiciously named Calle Desengaño (“Disappointment Street” in Spanish), a lane where middle aged prostitutes went to semi-retire.
I arrived in Madrid with a lot of NYC attitude and ambition and learned very quickly to pack it away. At that time no one really used email or spoke English and for sure, no one worked between the hours of 1-4pm because that was time for lunch and siesta. This was still the era of old-school Madrid when it was important to know a friend of a friend of one of the King’s cousins in order to get anything done. But at the same time, things in Spain were starting to get interesting: the Guggenheim Bilbao had opened in 1997 and was proving that by building something of great architectural value in a city, it could completely change and reinvent a place. The chef Ferran Adria and his El Bulli restaurant was making headlines as the first modern destination restaurant and making the point that chefs could be artists. Although initially I had wished we lived in Barcelona because it seemed more international, I grew to love Madrid and all its secret places that you had to really work to uncover. I met Virginia Irurita the co-founder of Made for Spain, who helped me to connect to the movers and shakers in the country, and my artist friend from college, Nicholas Woods, introduced me to inspiring creative friends like the Esteva family in Mallorca. I met fellow expat journalist Andrew Ferren who coincidentally just wrote the latest New York Times YOUR GUIDE to Madrid for the NY Times Travel section. (He gave the w-report an extra tip: if you had to go into the Prado to see two artworks in his opinion it should be Rogier van der Weyden’s “Descent from the Cross” —”check out the plants in the work- botanists say they can recognize each one yet it really moves you —some people cry in front of this painting” —and Diego Velázquez’s “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan”— “ the incredibly restrained palette, which is so typical of Spanish painting, those somber and sober colors-it’s a damn sexy painting!”)
Because we didn’t have iphones then, I have almost no images from my three years of adventure in Spain. Just memories, endless inspiration and stories. More than 20 years later Madrid is a very different place. So many South Americans (and Americans) have moved there in the last few years that someone I spoke to recently called it the “Miami of Europe.” For better or worse, gone are the days of three hour lunches, bank tellers smoking cigarettes behind the counter and no one being able to speak English.
Although in the last few years I have been back to Spain to report a few stories—mostly in Mallorca and Menorca—I haven’t been to Madrid since we left in 2004. I am feeling the urge to return to Calle Desengaño soon but in the meantime, we spoke to a few of our favorite Spain-based creatives to get the latest intel. This one is a big one dear readers! So many incredible diamonds. We share some with all of you but if you want to discover the rest of them, please subscribe.
MAKING A MOVE: Patricia Rezai in BARCELONA AND MENORCA
“Anytime I go to a city I look for a candle store, the best cake shop and the best bookstore.”
AFTER STUDYING IN London and living more than a decade in Madrid, the creative entrepreneur and consultant Patricia Rezai, who founded the company CYRA APHRODISIACS, headed to Barcelona two years ago to move in with her now fiancee Omar Sosa, the visionary creative director and co-founder of Apartamento Magazine. She is still adjusting to her new urban home, but shares with us her three favorite places…and as a bonus she also talks to the w-report about her beloved spots on the island of Menorca, a place where she and Omar have shared a house together for almost five years now.
BARCELONA
I am obsessed with CERERIA SUBIRA. Inside it’s beautiful and it’s also one of the oldest shops of its kind in Barcelona, dating back to 1761. It specializes in wax making; they provide candles to the Sagrada Família. The family that now owns it has conserved its historic Baroque interior and entering this place is like being in a fairy tale. It’s my wet dream because I am obsessed with burning things—candles, incense. I go here every few weeks to stock up.
I am obsessed with various things in life. I have a voyeuristic side to me -I love to observe people —and my second obsession is sweets. I love cakes and desserts so putting all these things together at PASTELERIAS MAURI is a dream. l also live for nostalgic places that inspire visions of how I would live back in the 30s or 40s. I am a bit of a romantic, and here I am always fantastizing about how I am sitting in the sun in Barecleona eating a slice of Sacher cake and drinking chamomile tea and looking at all these beautiful women in pearl necklaces and fur coats having their daily gossip. Literally nothing has changed here since it opened in 1929.
LLIBRERIA FINESTRES is a very big beautiful bookstore in the center of Barcelona and it has such a great selection of books from around the world: English; French; Catalan. It’s a very pleasant store to spend time in—there are sofas everywhere and a really nice cafe in the back. When I first moved to Barcelona I would go to Finestres and sit there for a couple of hours reading a book and sit at the cafe and I would end up mingling and speaking to people. It made me feel not so alone. It’s my emotional soft spot in the city.
MENORCA
Omar and I love to drive up to GRANJA LLURIACH just before sunset. We follow a winding road through fields in the middle of nowhere and the light is just beautiful and cows are grazing. It’s like driving in a story book and suddenly you rock up this littel gravel driveway and reach this beautiful noble style Menorcan-style house and there is always a subtle wind and you hear the sound of roosters. The really beautiful thing about going there is not knowing what to expect. You enter this house which has remained impregmaable since maybe the 1940s and you buy cheese in the living room. It’s a place where they cultivate cheese and do their own marmaledaes and dairy products. Everything is so delicious and Nina who works there is such a sweetheart. The real secret is the bathroom. Ask if you can use it. That is all I am going to say.
What is so interesting about SALINAS DE LA CONCEPCION is that the family of a friend of mine bought this estate when I first started going to Menorca and so I have been observing its transformation over the years, as they impeccably restored the salt flats. It’s in the port of Fornells and the light and sunsets there are incredible. They created a salt brand Sal de Menorca which is essentially the “Tell me you have been to Menorca without telling me you’ve been to Menorca” when you rock up to someone’s houses and they have it in their kitchen. It’s the IT salt of the island and THE souvenir. What I really love about visiting is that in the middle of such brutal nature and seeing it unravel its power and secrets— producing all this salt and the colors of the flats—the pinks and the browns and the beiges-it is really magical. And the house itself which they refurbished and conserved with the Virgin of La Concepción on the roof feels like a sacred sanctuary. Anytime we go there for the day we come out of there feeling so reenergized.
ES MOLI DE FOC is a restaurant in an old cereal mill with super classic Menorcan interiors that we love going to. It’s in the really small town of Sant Climent. In our opinion they have the best rice on the island. Whenever Omar and I are in Menorca we always try to go to only the really legit Menorcan places just because we don’t want the island to lose its essence. Moli is very dear to us and we also order paellas and take them home and they are super nice. For a good and authentic dining experience we 100% always recommend this place.
THE ROSA OF MALLORCA
Both of us Ws have girls crushes on Rosa Esteva who is without a doubt the most chicest Mallorquin we know. Thankfully she helps us ALL become more stylish with her cultish fashion brand Cortana —best experienced at its destination worthy flagship in Palma complete with a new cafe and an art space. (Guess where Patrizia is getting her wedding dress made? Cortana of course).
No one knows what’s going on the island—in terms of really special cultural projects— more than Rosa, whose family owns two of the most extraordinary resorts on Mallorca (I would go as far as to say in all of Spain) both located on the east side of the island near the village of Artà: Finca Son Gener and Es Racó d'Artà. (I wrote about the latter project and the Esteva family for T Magazine a few years ago). For more…please subscribe! Those that do, read on. x
