Cava Baja: Inns, Muleteers and the Birth of Tapas
Why is it significant?
Walk slowly down this narrow street and notice how it bends, gently but stubbornly, as if it were following something you cannot see. Hams hang in tavern windows, wooden doors open onto deep courtyards, and here and there an old sign still carries the word posada, inn.
Key Facts
| Place | Cava Baja: Inns, Muleteers and the Birth of Tapas |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle de la Cava Baja, 28005 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.41290, -3.70890 |
| Part of Walk | Tapas, Tripe and the Sunday Rastro: La Latina & Lavapiés, Madrid's Old Popular Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk slowly down this narrow street and notice how it bends, gently but stubbornly, as if it were following something you cannot see. Hams hang in tavern windows, wooden doors open onto deep courtyards, and here and there an old sign still carries the word posada, inn.
That invisible something is a wall. In the twelfth century Christian Madrid was ringed by a defensive wall, and outside it ran a ditch, a cava. When the city outgrew its walls, people simply built their houses in and along the old ditch, and the street kept the curve. At its northern end stood a gate called the Puerta Cerrada, the Closed Gate, which, the story goes, was shut for good because robbers kept lurking in its dark passage.
Now imagine this street four hundred years ago. Carts and mule trains arrived from Toledo and La Mancha loaded with wine, oil, cheese and grain. The Cava Baja was lined with posadas where the muleteers stabled their animals in the courtyard, slept upstairs and ate whatever the innkeeper had in the pot. This was, in a way, the bus station of old Madrid, and it never stopped feeding people.
Who invented the tapa? Nobody knows, and that has never stopped anyone from telling stories. One legend has a king covering his glass of wine with a slice of ham to keep out the dust; tapar means to cover. What is certain is the custom: a small bite served with every drink, so that the wine went down slowly and the customer stayed. On a Sunday afternoon this street becomes one long, noisy, standing dinner, as people hop from bar to bar.
And this is the land of cocido madrileño, the city's great stew of chickpeas, vegetables and meats, served in three rounds, called vuelcos: first the broth with fine noodles, then the chickpeas and vegetables, then the meats. Many food historians connect it to the slow-cooked Sabbath stew of medieval Spain's Jews. At the southern end of the street, cross the Plaza del Humilladero toward the market with the rounded roofs.