Delfos

Delfos, an art gallery and bar, is on the road between Mojacar and Turre. It's open every evening from 9.00pm. Mariano, who has a great knowledge about Spanish modern art, will show you around or just pour you a drink as you take it easy. No tapas, no one selling roses and no accordion players.

Mojácar, it is said, is blessed with an enormous number of bars. Most of them being the usual stainless steel dives where a lack of imagination, a reptilian smell of stale sweat and the pounding thump from the music system make the gentle art of conversation as lost as a five cent brandy. The Delfos is an exception to this, with a phenomenal decoration from the last twenty or thirty years of Spanish art peppered with a few foreign masters (that's a Fritz horse in the middle of my picture). It's a different way of looking at life - over a whisky.

The locale is huge, with odd rooms and outside terraces filled with objets, sculptures and paintings. It was designed - and more or less built - by Manuel Coronado (one of Spain's best known modern artists) about twenty years ago. The Mojácar town hall as usual, confronted by the chance to improve its image with an injection of culture and some famous artists, fell over itself to do nothing.

It's not perhaps the kind of place to go drinking, but it's the place you take people to when you want to show off your town. Look, you say, have you ever seen a place like this?