Café-Restaurante Suizo

This is one of the most curious bars of Barcelona. Café-Restaurante Suizo opened in the 50s of nineteenth century. With a sober and inartistic style, this bar comes with a great history. For nearly 100 years, the bar had different owners and customers. However, there was something that never changed in all those years: the deserved reputation as a good place to eat abundantly and well. In fact, it used to have the longer menu in all Barcelona and for this reason it didn’t have a speciality. In any case, meat was its strong point, in addition to arròs Parellada, a boneless meat and shelled seafood paella. The name of this dish comes from doctor Juli Parellada, a habitual costumer of the restaurant.

 

Situated in Plaça Reial 17, Suizo connected with Rambla. Its localization was unbeatable. The other excellent quality of the establishment was its service. The waiters and waitresses are still remembered: Josep Cornella alias “Pepe”, the Italian Humberto, Palomeras, Jaume Carabellido (the author of arròs Parellada)… Waitresses, meanwhile, contributed with a risqué touch that made an even larger fame to Suizo.

One of the highlights of the restaurant was its private rooms. Working-class customers frequented the ground floor (although bullfighters and prostitutes were not well regarded). In the first floor, on the other hand, the clients had other status. Despite private rooms usually were rented for christenings, communions or weddings, in that floor met very influential people of the first half of twentieth century.  This privacy was one of the most attractive for politicians, artists and intellectuals, which gave a greater prestige to the restaurant. Some of the most renowned people that went to Suizo were, for example, Primo de Rivera (where he planned some loose ends about coup d'état of 1923), Francesc Cambó, Joan March or Rothschild. One of the most popular politician of Barcelona at that time, Alejandro Lerroux, used to go to Suizo. As it seems, this workerist, importer of demagoguery and populism in Spain, used to taste the most exquisite and expensive cuisine of the restaurant and then usually used to request take-out sardine sandwiches in order to eat in public. By this way, he used to go to working-class’ suburbs impersonating a humble person. The satirical poem of Josep Maria de Sagarra, Al gran sapastre de la gana ibèrica, remembers this personage visiting habitually this place:

Fa trenta anys i un mes i un dia,

            que estripat d’americana

amb un ‘jipi’ de tres peles

            i unes calces de poc gruix,

rodejat de quatre pintes

            i de quatre morts de gana,

arribava a Barcelona

            la corpenta d’en Lerroux.

Escrivia paraulotes amb la punta

            del seu llapis,

prometia als cirabotes, al camàlic

            i al manyà,

botifarres d’arquebisbes i salsitxes

            d’escolapis

i altres coses deshonestes i difícils

            d’empassar.

S’agitava, remugava, renegava,

            flestomava,

remenava, estossegava, tavernari

            i marranís;

tots els llonzes l’aplaudien i

            després Lerroux plegava,

i endrapava, i endrapava,

            i endrapava en el Suís.

In Suizo, in addition, until 1949 was presented the literary prize Premio Nadal. It is still remember the night when Carmen Laforet won with Nada. The place was practically empty. Nevertheless, the café was a usual meeting place of artists and writers. The group formed by Valentí Almirall, Albert de Sicília Llanas i Castells (Albert Llanas), Conrad Roure and others Renaixença’s members formed in this bar “la penya de les es” opposed to “la penya de les as” situated in Cafè Espanyol, in Plaça Reial. The two groups were confronted because they disagreed on how it should be written the words in the plural in Catalan. For this reason both went habitually to different bars: if not, they would have finished fighting.

A few decades later, Suizo was one of the most popular sites of modernist artists. Rusiñol, Casas and Narcís Oller went frequently to eating and drinking.

 

Ultimately, in 1949 Café-Restaurante Suizo closed its doors. Miquel Matas, its last owner that had bought the property after working there for years as maître, was the last customer. A great client of the restaurant invited him to a private room in order to people did not see Matas crying. Despite the early closure of Suizo, it is remembered as one of the greatest bars of the history of Barcelona.

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