The famous Mejunje was never a cafe, but rather a well-crafted platform for intersex hustlerism.
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 29 June 2025 — I go to the Novelty—I never go to the Novelty—the café owned by Unamuno and Torrente-Ballester, although I’m not a fan of either. Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor bustles with tourists and people who, like me, are desperately seeking a bit of air conditioning. I have a coffee with milk and open the issue of Letras Libres dedicated to Vargas Llosa. The usual tributes, tearful and almost identical evocations. The man with a million friends, I think, all close friends. In memories, an acquaintance elevates himself to the rank of soul brother, and the soul brother ascends to blood cousin.
I close the magazine, a little fed up with the Peruvian. Why do I never come to the Novelty? I like the atmosphere of an old café. The dark wood furniture, the huge mirror, the lecterns on which the newspapers hang. It’s barely changed in a hundred years. There’s a buzz of voices that would normally be unbearable, but here, now, it’s what gives me the peace of mind to read. I wish I had a novel or a notebook to write in, or a group of arguing friends, but I make do. From the front page, Mario looks at me mockingly.
I’m glad the Novelty exists and that every city in Spain has a café like it. There’s Gijón in Madrid and Pombo in Santander, and even some pastry shops that do the job, like Rialto in Oviedo or La Mallorquina in Puerta del Sol. I’m glad my coffee culture wasn’t born here but comes from Cuba, and that what I feel when I enter the Novelty isn’t exactly a novelty, but rather a reunion.
I’m glad the Novelty exists and that every city in Spain has a café like it.
George Steiner believed that among the handful of things that defined Europe was the café ritual. From Lisbon to St. Petersburg—not Moscow—and from Seville to Prague, almost everything was discussed, written, and thought about in cafés. Chess was played—the famous games of Lenin and Tristan Tzara in Zurich, or those of Napoleon, Rousseau, or Benjamin Franklin at the Café de la Régence—and conspiracies were hatched.
The fury of opening cafés in Cuba during my university years was one of the best things about my youth. We became accustomed to talking about everything in the cafés, where you could smoke freely—a habit inconceivable in Spain—and every conversation or infatuation was shielded by the smoke. In Santa Clara, the bar was a café and the café was a bar, depending on the time of day. Lycanthropic, a café dimmed the lights and became a nightclub. In the morning, hungover waiters served us, and served themselves, a strong cup of coffee.
The famous Mejunje was never a café, but rather a well-crafted platform for intersex hustlerism with the Party’s blessing. If there was coffee, it was reheated grounds, and it was preferable to drop into other establishments if you weren’t seeking the company of unwelcome characters of all stripes and passports.
The Europa—Steiner would be horrified—was and perhaps still is the battleground where Italian settlers negotiate with their jineteras [hookers] for child support. I often saw a troubled Giuseppe or a sad Alessio suffer the consequences of a tropical night with those mulaticas, rarely mulatonas.
Not to be missed is the priceless Revolución, filled with communist memorabilia and located next to the Tren Blindado [Armored Train]. A Che Guevara fan could stop there, be overcome with emotion by a photo of Fidel with Hemingway, and spend a few dollars before making the pilgrimage to the mausoleum where the Argentine’s unlikely bones lie.
In the Obrador — with its white walls and tables — the few real Marxists in Santa Clara, always utopian and poor, met. They were more closely watched than the dissidents. I frequented their chess boards and always caught someone I knew who was off base.
We must not leave out the priceless Revolución, full of communist memorabilia and next to the Tren Blindado.
“I’m in a café,” Lezama says in at least a couple of texts, like a profession of faith. It’s not hard to imagine him sipping a daiquiri, his ears listening for voices and epiphanies, à la Joyce, like the resounding “Chinese Bride, Good Luck” from La cantidad hechizada*.
Cafés and bookstores always went hand in hand, and not far away was the little shop where I sometimes—on payday—bought cigars or cigarillos. How long did I spend going from café to café? When I went to Havana or Camagüey or Cienfuegos, I always looked for a place that served good drinks and had a cigar shop nearby. The one in Cienfuegos, where an ancestor of mine worked for decades, was staffed by a Mason whose golden ring—with the compass and set square—reverberated as he arranged the cigars in a glass pyramid
Old times and old things, like Steiner’s cafés. From another planet. A different life and faces, of whose whereabouts I have no idea. It all comes back when I go to the Novelty, and although Mario looks at me solemnly from the cover of Letras Libres, he knows better than anyone what the poor, happy life of a young writer is like.
*The Spellbound Quantity — A book of essays by José Lezama Lima
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