Bar Paco: no smoke, no sawdust, no slot machines

Bar Paco holds on without smoke, sawdust or slot machines

The floor is clean. That is the first thing the photo shows, and also the most uncomfortable detail: at bar Paco there is **no sawdust, no cigarette butts, no shrimp shells** on the floor anymore. No Larios ashtrays either, and no machines shouting "advance, one, two, three." What remains is a counter, fluorescent light, roasted coffee and a very specific clientele. The scene repeats itself in any province; only the view from the window changes.

Whatever peine to the sawdust-covered counter?

The *de-sawdusting*, as one participant calls it, has swept away almost all the props. First came the **health inspections** and the end of throwing food on the floor to cover it with sawdust. Then the smoke, with the Larios and Cinzano ashtrays heading for the bin. After that, the silence of the slot machines. What survives is a recognizable but stripped-down place, with no display cases of dried-out tapas and no cassette racks, objects now described as collector's items.

Who is at the counter of a bar Paco at 8 a.m.?

**Municipal workers in high-visibility overalls, retirees and the self-employed bar owner** who opens, serves and takes the money. That is the line-up described for the seven-to-eight a.m. slot on a working day, with not a single woman in the frame. At four in the afternoon the same space reorganizes itself: three tables of dominoes, mus or tute. On Sundays, football.

Some argue that income level does not change the ritual. In more upmarket places the same pattern repeats with different wrapping: the quick coffee before clocking in, drunk standing up, in just as much of a hurry or more. The liturgy of the *little coffee* does not distinguish by class; it distinguishes by time of day.

The bar as the office of empty Spain: the morning of the hunt

There is one image that explains what this business is for better than any statistic. A small hunting town, first thing in the morning: a meeting and a draw for positions before heading out to the hills. Next to the bar, according to the person describing the scene, **about 40 rifles in car trunks parked no more than 100 metres away**. The place is the office, changing room and boardroom of early-rising Spain, the Spain that never appears in photos of urban terraces because at eight on a January Sunday the city dweller is still in bed.

There, coffee with milk is not a brand experience: it is logistics. And the smell —churros, roasted coffee, burning firewood— is the first thing several comments mention.

From bar Paco to kebab: what happens when the shutter comes down

The other side of the story is replacement. Places that were neighbourhood bars and are now kebab shops, with a refit, a new menu and a clientele relocated down the street. It is no anecdote: it is the cycle of a business that served one person at a time.

The involuntary contrast comes from Pyongyang. While here the debate is whether the corner bar will survive one more winter, **North Korea was announcing bulgogi restaurants in eight cities** —Pyongyang, Rason, Nampo, Haeju, Wonsan, Sariwon, Chongjin and Hamhung—, some of them **2,800 and 2,970 m²**, with landscaped areas and construction finished in under six months. Investment decided by decree versus the daily grind of a self-employed worker.

The question the photo cannot answer remains: how many of those places will open tomorrow at seven, and how many will have changed their sign before the year is out.