Delfos Bar, Grill, Apartments and Concerts.

One day, my late wife brought home a foal she had acquired from a gypsy. Barbara loved horses and always rode bareback, When she was a child in California, she would ride to school on her horse and, as they said in those times: a hundred dollar horse and a five hundred dollar saddle. 

Well, the horse was the important thing. 

The stable, for want of a better word, was an old building near our house in Mojácar, across the street from the camposanto. A couple of years later, a Madrid doper and his British girlfriend moved in, put up a plank of wood across some bricks, and opened a bar: La Venta del Olivo. It wasn't a great success perhaps, but on the plus side, management didn't object if the customer rolled himself a joint. 

Carlos (known to all as Karlangas) tended to stock whatever he could find, which was often a fraction skimpy. You mean, he told me once, you've never tried Kahlua, reaching for the one lonely bottle in evidence upon the shelf behind him. 

Life went on, and the place was taken over by a famous artist from Águilas via Mallorca: Manuel Coronado. He put a young Mariano - him with the long hair (he now runs a successful flamenco tablao in Mojácar pueblo) - behind the bar, covered the walls of his now greatly extended building with his paintings and set out to enjoy life in Mojácar as we all strive to do. Manuel ('Manolo') was indeed famous, and he created the Premio Delfos, with candidates who would come down for a few days and stay in the Parador hotel. These included José María Álvarez de Manzano, the mayor of Madrid for over a decade; Manolo Pimentel, a cabinet minister under Aznar, and one or two others...  

The town hall, an early enthusiast of the if-it-ain't-one-of-ours doctrine currently known as La Prioridad Nacional, would have nothing to do either with Manolo Coronado (they still don't have one of his paintings in the municipal collection) or indeed with his Premio Delfos.  Manolo eventually threw in the towel when a couple of local people from Turre borrowed a horse of his for the fiestas, and managed through inattention to strangle its foal. 

Mariano was left running the Delfos. Besides several brave attempts to open a restaurant, hold exhibitions and run the bar, the fact is that it is a little off the beaten path and never attracted the custom it deserved. 

Now it's run by a new group, including the indefatigable Angeli van Os. I had got to know Angeli while we were both living in Paris in around 1984, and she must have remembered me talking about Mojácar, as a few years later, to my surprise, I bumped into her here. Angeli was a successful model before she retired and settled locally. She is one of those lucky people who remembers everybody's name, which makes her ideal for the front-person of the Delfos. The bar and restaurant is now very much a place to visit, while enjoying the advantage of being off the tourist radar. There are concerts and other events going on regularly. It's a fun place with plenty of outside tables, empty views and amusing regulars. I have to say - I've still yet to see anyone from the town hall there.

The Delfos is located on the left, down from the cemetery on the Mojácar road to Turre.