This traditional neighbourhood ‘across the river’ is where the city’s creatives are heading as the centre heats up
Madrid’s current boomtown dynamics are driving the city centre way upmarket, pushing the average punter to outer barrios in search of cheaper rent. As seen in New York and elsewhere, the creative class is moving too – crossing the River Manzanares to open studios in the former factories and metalworks of Carabanchel. Now the city’s most populous district, this used to be a separate municipality, which was annexed to the capital in 1948 and built up into canyons of high-rise flats to house the postwar influx from the provinces, and later from Latin America.
Today, old and new Madrid coexist here in a certain harmony: coffee roasters and bistros slot in beside weathered blue-collar tapas bars and Colombian or Peruvian cantinas, but the neighbourhood still feels a bit like an independent republic. Long-term residents roll their eyes at claims made for the area’s coolness, and some express pride, or resistance, through a popular T-shirt slogan: “This is not Soho. This is Carabanchel.”
The district’s focal point is La Capa, a defunct 1960s cafe revived by three local men, who gave the original interior a good scrub and upgraded the kitchen to serve exemplary dishes such as chicken escalope with red pepper confit and premium wines from small bodegas, many sold at cost price.
