Café Novelty
The Café Novelty is the oldest existing coffee house in the Spanish university city of Salamanca . The café, founded in 1905 on the main square Plaza Mayor , became famous as a meeting place for artists, writers and politicians. The Tertulias meeting here visited personalities such as Miguel de Unamuno , Ortega y Gasset , Antonio Tovar , Juan Benet , Pedro Laín Entralgo , Francisco Umbral , Carmen Martín Gaite , Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and Víctor García de la Concha .
When it opened, the café was four times the size it is today. It offered billiard tables , a restaurant and a dance hall and was considered the “first address” for half a century. Its founders were the brothers Vicente and Federico García Martín. King Alfonso XIII dined here. During the Spanish Civil War it was renamed Café National (until 1964). A banquet was held here in the 1950s for dictator Francisco Franco on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Salamanca .
After a period of decline and short-term closure in the 1960s, the café was reborn under its old name after 1964, and since the 1980s attempts have been made to partially reconstruct its magnificent old interior.
Today the café is once again regarded as the city's model institution and a literary and artistic meeting place. Víctor García de la Concha , Juan Manuel de Prada , Jorge Volpy and Paco Novelty frequent here, and foreign guests of honor such as Jimmy Carter , François Mitterrand and Jacques Delors have been entertained here.
gallery
Centenary of Café Novelty.
Plaza Mayor, City Hall and Café Novelty.
literature
- Ramón Grande del Brío: Un día en el Café Novelty , Librería Cervantes (Salamanca).
- Jesús Formigo, Pedro Ladoire, Paco Novelty, Francisco Castaño: Café Novelty , Ediciones Café Novelty, 1999.
Web links
- Café Novelty Official Website.
Coordinates: 40 ° 57 ′ 55.2 " N , 5 ° 39 ′ 49.4" W.