Bar, by Luke Carter and Laura Losada, is an illustrated book that captures the true essence of some of the meeting and pleasure places of Formentera. Here we bring you some excerpts of their captivating book…
The book had its beginnings in the chair of write before work about the people, the place, the things I saw. And other times I wouldn’t write at all, just sit there and pretend to write, because I knew any minute the woman I love would come around the corner and see me sat there.
That woman and I ended up writing the book together. We met and shared stories, memories, and set upon a love letter to the bars of Formentera. We wanted to record the life and emotion of each place; the pa amb coses in Can Rafalet, a bar that sits by the sea in Es Caló; or the Sunday paella on the coast in Pelayo, so outrageously large it was mixed with a rowing boat’s oar. The book would grow to feature over thirty bars, fully illustrated by me, and it is was published in the spring of 2024.
Lucas brings the coffee. The Cuban with the fake tattoo sleeves rests in the street like some exquisite owl and my bike is tied to the old stop sign at the zebra crossing where I wait for you to come.
La Mota
I have always liked bars. I like their personalities, their characters. I like the cheap daily menus, the lines of shiny bottles, the personalised napkins, that potential whisper of something about to come. And in that sense Formentera is somewhat special. It boasts bars of history, bars with tradition, bars planted on the sand or set under juniper shade, each different in their way and revealing charms as gently as sunlight through a window.
There were places that were simply impossible not to mention. While new bars build their personal mythologies over time, others seem to have been forever here, stepping out one sunny day fully formed and unchangeable. Blue Bar is one such place, a blue-silver hallucinogenic alien-themed bar, with locals sat under parasols waiting for sunset and nighttime spectacles of dancing extraterrestrials. Bar del Centro is another, an old grandfather of a bar that sits happily in the heart of a busy Sant Francesc, a people watcher’s dream, with rooms above and the whole world in front.
Others like Piratabus feature too; the legendary kiosk that really was once a bus, as does the historical Fonda Platé, one of the oldest on the island, its story told through the conversations of an old man and his memories of how the place used to be. Yet perhaps in terms of history, no bar in Formentera comes close to the old iconic Fonda Pepe, soldiering on doggedly beside the plaza of Sant Ferran for over half a century.
Terry drank there. The sparrows eat the crumbs from the plates. I see women pass with ensaïmadas. Tomas and Corvus discuss important looking things while two Germans use their fingers to signal the length of the hippy’s toenails as he passes.
Bar del Centro
Rumour has it Bob Dylan played there, as did Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, and if you sit down and listen to the stories of Julián, the bar’s faithful owner, he will transport you so vividly to the bygone hippy days that you feel you’re almost back there. Good music plays in the green painted salon, Barça and Madrid play perpetually on the antique football table. Only the best of bars have layers of collected memorabilia on the shelves, random trophies and framed photos of owners when they were young. You want to capture it like a photo and never let it go.
Nowadays, the silverbacks grumble how things aren’t the same anymore, teasing you with stories that inevitably end with “you should have been here 30 years ago.” These guardians of the island do a good job maintaining the tombs of local history, but our book was also concerned with the here and now, of the locals who make it special and moments of the day-to-day. So, when a controversial change to the owners of several bars rumbled overhead during the book’s publication, we felt it had taken on a new purpose. It became a social document, a shared memory of a changing time, one that could capture the now of yesterday and stand beside the old men who talk about how the island used to be.
Bars like Lucky, La Franja, Piratabus, authentic wooden locals that looked like they could have been constructed by the sea, were suddenly all gone, existing now only in the questions of tourists and the memory of locals. Of all the bars to disappear, 62 was my favourite. It was a charming mix of tourists and islanders sat on the sand with pomadas, gin served with freshly squeezed lemon juice, and a bright blue feeling that you were in one of Rhomer’s summers.
Bartolo, on the coast of Mitjorn, was one of the only beach bars to survive the storm of change. It is a beautiful, ramshackle, blue chair spread bar, with the smell of rosemary from the red cliffs and hamburgers from the kitchen. It is a bar that sits you so close to the sea that you feel you should be swimming. It’s run by Bartolo and his family, who 40 years ago found a sea-swept branch of juniper and with it declared in the sand that this would be a perfect spot for a bar. The branch survives to this day, loaded with hundreds of hanging shells, where people have written a wish and attached it to the tree. The bar is now shiny and new (and suspiciously not blue) but at least it’s there, run by the same welcoming family.
Scanning the shells on my last visit, there was one wish that struck me as particularly pertinent. On an orange and grey shell, written in a small hand with black ink, were just two simple words. “Don’t Change.” This book reminds us that change is not always a bad thing, just so long as there is something to remind us of what was here before.
Outside the chairs are lined against the wall where Valentin guards the street and Alex and his boys and the artists from the market and all the people I love to see there make Sant Ferran the ultimate plaza of the island.
Fonda Pepe
