In Spain it has always been said that bars are safe, profitable business with great family tradition. With more than 260,000 bars distributed throughout the country, it is the State with the most hospitality per inhabitant of Europe: one for every 175 people. However, the reality shown by the hoteliers themselves is far from that idyllic vision.
The content creator Jaime Gumiel has published a report in which a full day with Javi, a hotelier who has been in the sector, has spent what is not seen behind this business. What was previously a family project transmitted from parents to children, today has become a resistance work with endless days, fiscal pressure and low generational relief.
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“I open the bar at six in the morning and many times I close at one in the morning. They are almost 20 hours of daily work,” says Javi, owner of a cafeteria in Guadalajara. “This is all sacrifice. No one gives you anything.”
“FROM THE MARISKING TO A NEIGHBORHOOD BAR”
Javi’s trajectory is marked by the hospitality from his youth. “My parents had a bar and I followed the same way because I didn’t like studying. I started as a waiter and I never left this world,” he recalls.
For years he ruled a marsquery with up to ten employees, but the 2008 crisis forced him to close. “Marisquería made me dust. With the crisis I had to leave it and come to Guadalajara to ride something smaller,” he explains. The pandemic was another devastating blow: “It was fatal. I was about to ruin me. We were forbidden to work and everything they gave us in aid we had to return.”
Today it maintains a more modest place, but with identical delivery: “I have always opened and I have always closed. In this business you never disconnect.”
Low salary and high tax
Although many clients believe that having a bar ensures profits, the reality is another. “A waiter can charge 1,000, 1,300 or 1,500 euros, but it costs me about 3,700 euros. The state takes half,” explains Javi.
The hotelier recognizes that the margins are increasingly narrow: “Before, money was earned, now it is all taxes and more taxes. Customers believe we are rich, but the reality is that we barely cover expenses.”
To the fiscal pressure other costs are added: licenses, rentals, terraces and the difficulty of finding personnel. “Now no one wants to work in hospitality. You have to manage what you can.”
The bar as a social refuge
Beyond the figures, the bars fulfill a social function in Spain. They are meeting and coexistence spaces. “Here people come to breakfast, to have coffee with friends, to disconnect from day to day. The bar is like a second house,” says a client interviewed by Gumiel.
That function explains why, despite the difficulties, they continue to exist. In fact, the hospitality industry accounts for 6% of Spanish GDP and uses more than 1.7 million people, among the most important sectors of the economy.
Javi summarizes it simply: “A bar is not just a business. It is sacrifice, tradition and life. Although I have often wanted to leave it, I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Spain is the country with the highest bars per inhabitant of the world and some, such as the historic Botín house in Madrid, have been open since the 18th century. However, every day they close more places than they open.
The lack of generational relief, the rise in costs and the bureaucracy make maintaining a bar “almost an impossible mission.” “This was before a family business that passed from parents to children. It is now a daily struggle to survive,” concludes Javi, while preparing to open a new day at six in the morning.