Snippets from Spain

Baffled in Madrid’s Oldest Hardware Store

Last Friday evening in a plaza in central Madrid, Fabio and I greeted our contractor and his wife, Ivan and Eva, with a customary two-cheek kiss. Ivan announced we were going to a “ferreteria,” a hardware store. I thought we were meeting for a drink and dinner. Ivan had gutted and remodeled our apartment five years ago. Why did we have to go to a hardware store when I had my heart set on a chilled crispy albariño?

We dodged taxis and tourists as Ivan and Eva wove us through the narrow streets of the Las Letras neighborhood. We rounded several corners until we stopped in front of a wooden double door with glass panes. A sign topping the entrance stated in curvy black letters “Ferreteria.” I had to trust Ivan knew what he was doing. Our apartment had turned out perfectly.

We stepped inside. We faced floor to ceiling wooden cabinets with pliers and scissors affixed to the doors of each. Knives, forks, and spoons adorned others. Door keys and knockers covered some. A smooth U-shaped oak counter separated customers from the tools. The antique silver cash register at its end delighted Fabio. It reminded him of his boyhood tinkering with a similar one at his parents’ clothing manufacturing factory in Bogotá.

High-top tables prevented me from edging closer to investigate. So did the customers sitting at them enjoying wine, beer, and other beverages. The counter where shopkeepers had shown clients nails and screws had been converted into a bar top. We had come to the right place after all.

We had entered a former hardware store, founded in 1888 and the oldest one in Madrid. In its heyday, it held the reputation as the best in the city. In 2015, the store’s owner Maria Jesús after five decades serving customers decided to retire. She had started working in her grandfather’s store when she was fourteen-years old. There were just five employees then. When she retired, she said her experience there was the best of her life because of how well the customers and neighbors treated her and the other employees. When she left, many of the implements remained.

A brass plaque embedded in the sidewalk in front of the establishment demonstrated that the business had remained open providing the same service for over a hundred years. It had weathered economic depressions, pandemics, and other calamities. The Madrid city government beginning in 2006 has provided bronze or brass plaques to over one-hundred-seventy businesses that have met these criteria. It chose a well-known artist, designer, and humorist Antonio Mingote to develop a unique sign for each entity. Each represents the business function and year it started. Though the plaques differ, each contains the same phrase from the city government expressing gratitude to the business for its service to the people of Madrid. It commemorates these institutions as instrumental in the cultural and economic development of the city. It honors the preservation of family tradition and commerce.

Early days and today

Ferreteria no longer sells pliers and screwdrivers so perhaps the plaque remains because it offers another tool and service to madrileños. When entrepreneur, investor, and art collector María Antonia Escapa learned the store was for sale due to Maria Jesus’s retirement, she proposed to buy it. She promised its former owner that she would restore it to preserve the shop’s essence. Escapa also decorated the walls with art from her private collection. Three years of meticulous renovation, including scrubbing the wood floor, turned it into bar and a Michelin star restaurant.

Escapa remodeled the basement where the wood-cum-coal cellar once stood and turned it into a dining room. This domed brick space formed part of the first building on the site, the Royal College of Orphan Girls of Our Lady of Loreto constructed in 1585.

Former wood and coal celler and now dining room to enjoy Michelin-quality food

The four of us pulled stools up to a high-top table and bought wine and beer, not keys, locks, or hammers. We didn’t talk about hinges and door latches. Instead, we enjoyed the immersion in the old and new of Madrid, giving us an appreciation of the past while delighting in the present.

The plaques the city places to commemorate one-hundred year old businesses, Franco resistors whom Nazis deported to concentration camps, and famous people who inhabited certain buildings help us understand the hard work and dedication of those who have come before to create this great city.