5PM There is a correct way to drink absinthe, and it has a certain sense of theatre. On a quiet afternoon at Barcelona’s Bar Marsella the landlord José Lamiel Vallvé is demonstrating the time-honoured tradition. For this he requires: one glass of neat absinthe, a short silver fork, a pair of sugar cubes and a plastic bottle of water with – and this is the important part – a pin prick in the lid of the bottle. First, José balances the fork on the top of the glass of absinthe and places the sugar cubes into the cradle. Then, taking the water bottle, he squeezes a narrow jet very slowly over the sugar cubes. Keeping my eyes on the yellowy-green liquid, I see the magic start to happen. Ghostly tendrils appear, filling the glass until the liquid has become a misty emulsion. This is known, appropriately, as the ‘louche effect’.
The window display in Marseille-inspired Bar Pastís includes a leggy bar stool. Right: A gin and tonic at 1881 per Sagardi
A bartender pours sparkling rosé wine to customers at La Xampanyeria
The bar at Jamboree jazz club is dominated by a giant disco ball.
The late night crowd at Bar Marsella.
Absinthe has been drunk this way for at least a century. In 1922, while working as a European correspondent for the Toronto Star, Ernest Hemingway wrote of watching absinthe turn ‘milky when water was added’ and noted how the resulting drink had ‘the slow, culminating wallop that made the boulevardier want to get up and jump on his new straw hat in ecstasy’.
Although there are few boulevardiers in crumpled straw hats around today, some things never change and Bar Marsella is one of them. According to legend and the evidence of my own eyes, the bar has never once been properly cleaned in the two centuries since it opened in 1820. The roof is stained caramel from decades of accumulated cigarette smoke and thick cobwebs hang from the wooden shelves, draped spookily over full bottles of wine made by long-defunct vineyards.
It’s no surprise that Hemingway himself was a regular at Bar Marsella, as were Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and Antoni Gaudí. Back in the 1920s, José’s grandfather was the landlord and the bar was a hotbed of revolutionary ideas. ‘That was when the workers started organising and forming unions,’ explains José. ‘They had political meetings here which attracted people with big ideas: painters and writers. The connection was the absinthe.’ In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway described the Spanish disdain for anyone who chose to sleep during the hours of darkness: ‘For a long time your friends will be a little uncomfortable about it. Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night.’
They came to dance with the green fairy, and to put off going to bed.
These days the same is true of Barcelona, the Spanish capital’s defiant sibling. A night out here is to be enjoyed at leisure and at length. The streets begin to grow busy sometime before 8pm, particularly on the crowded main strip of La Rambla. Human statues line the path near the seafront, gathered around in costume as if someone’s shooting a superhero movie. Further up the road the crowds filter into the narrow passageways of the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), where the ancient stonework seems to echo with the ghosts of revellers from centuries past.