On October 12, the last chord will sound at Café Central. The emblematic venue in Plaza del Angel, the epicenter of jazz in Madrid since 1982, will come to an end after 43 years and more than 14,000 concerts offered on its stage. The reason, as reported by the newspaper El País, is the refusal of the owners of the property to renew the lease, which has led to the definitive closure of the establishment and the dismissal of its 35 workers.
For more than four decades, the Central has been much more than a live music club: it has been a cultural refuge, a meeting place for music lovers and artists from all over the world. On its small but legendary stage have passed fundamental jazz figures such as Tete Montoliu, Pedro Iturralde, Ron Carter, Brad Mehldau, Paquito D’Rivera or Ben Sidran, who even recorded his album Cien noches in 2008.
An intimate and revered space around the world.
As Javier González, the venue’s programmer, told ABC, “although it had been coming for some time,” the termination of the contract has been sudden. “For seven years we tried to negotiate unsuccessfully with the owners, who did not even agree to give us a concrete figure for a possible renewal”.
El Mundo reports that a mailing address(central2.0@cafecentralmadrid.com) has already been activated to look for a new location to reopen the project in another space, although for the moment there are no concrete advances. In the meantime, farewell concerts are planned with regular names in the line-up such as Javier Colina, Chano Domínguez, Joshua Edelman, Ignasi Terraza or Leo Sidran, who has already expressed to El País from New York his shock at the closure: “I entered for the first time at the age of 20, when I was a foreign student looking for a place to hold on to, and it became home and community”.
A cultural legacy that transcends music
Café Central has also been an audiovisual icon. Its art deco décor and cozy atmosphere made it the setting for series such as Anillos de oro or films such as Tenéis que venir a verla by Jonás Trueba. It has been the protagonist of books, records and exhibitions, and has kept alive an original aesthetic that has resisted fashions and renovations.
Specialized publications such as Down Beat placed it among the 100 best jazz clubs in the world, while Wire magazine ranked it eighth in Europe. The Associació de Músics de Jazz i Música Moderna de Catalunya awarded it the Premi a la Difusió de la Música en Viu in 2023, making it the first recipient outside Catalonia.