El Molino: From Flamenco to Cabaret to Cultural Center

Whether you’re a longtime Barcelona resident or a new arrival, if you’ve explored the Poble-sec neighborhood even slightly you’re bound to have come across the iconic windmill of El Molino. This part of town has traditionally been the city’s entertainment district—El Teatre Victoria, La Sala Apolo and other historic music and theater venues are only a stone’s throw away—and El Molino is arguably the most recognizable of them all.

The Beginnings of Barcelona’s “Moulin”

El Molino (“the windmill”) was founded in 1898 when the owner of La Pajarera (“the birdcage”)—a bar located on Vila i Vilà street in Poble-sec—reportedly sold the bar for just 100 pesetas, which is equivalent to approximately 400 euros today. The new owner, originally from the South of Spain, changed the name to La Pajarera Catalana (“the Catalan birdcage”) and set up a small stage inside. Within three years, the bar had been converted to a restaurant with a program of regular flamenco concerts and even offered a free car service that ran back and forth from Les Rambles to the establishment.

The concerts were performed by poor immigrants from Andalucía who had come to Barcelona in search of fame and fortune—or at least in search of work. They weren’t paid for their performances, but they were given free room and board, sleeping in wooden bunk beds constructed behind El Molino’s stage. The owner reportedly encouraged local prostitutes to hang out at the venue, to try to attract patrons.

The name was changed again in 1905 to El Gran Salón Siglo XX (“The Great 20th-Century Salon”) when the owner decided to try his hand at converting the venue into a combination cabaret-slash-movie house. Film was a hot new invention at the time. When he was still unable to turn a profit, he sold the bar in 1908.

In an attempt to strengthen the association between the Barcelona venue and the Paris cabaret scene, it would eventually be renamed El Petit Moulin Rouge in 1910—except for a few months in 1916 when the name was inexplicably changed to “the little palace,” or Petit Palais after yet another French establishment. The business model was different this time around, aimed at bringing popular cabaret and music hall-style shows from Paris to Barcelona.

The well-known Catalan architect Manuel Joaquim Raspall was hired in 1910 to remodel the Petit Moulin Rouge. He was known for his Modernista style, but this would be one of his Noucentisme works—a style of architecture that emphasized order and control, and grew out of a reaction to the freethinking, Bohemian tenets of Gaudí’s generation of architects and artists.

Raspall tore down much of the original wooden construction of the building and designed and built the outer framework that still remains essentially unchanged to this day. Three years later, the word “petit” was dropped, and Antoni Alstell took over as owner of the music venue.

In 1926, it was temporarily taken over by Miguel Primo de Rivera’s Spanish Patriotic Union political party to be used as their headquarters, but was restored to its former function in 1929 when the façade was remodeled in preparation for the International Exhibition in Barcelona. It was then that Barcelona’s Moulin Rouge was adorned with its iconic rotating windmill sails, designed by Catalan architect Josep Alemany i Juvé.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the venue was managed by the CNT worker’s union. It continued to offer live shows and served as a meeting place for Republicans. During this period, everyone—dancers, singers, waiters, cleaning staff, managers—were paid the same, according to the union’s proletarian belief system.

After the Spanish Civil War: The Golden Years

Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War ushered in an era of official, hardcore nationalism, which meant that all foreign-sounding names as well as anything referring to communism had to go. Barcelona’s Moulin Rouge changed its name for the last time, to El Molino (“the windmill”). The word “rouge” or “red” wasn’t allowed in any language, due to the perceived communist connection.

Francisco Serrano and his wife Vicenta Fernández, who already owned two well-respected music venues in Barcelona—El Sevilla and El Bataclan—decided to invest in a third venue. They are credited with restoring the venue’s old-school music-hall atmosphere and attracting a more upscale clientele. (They were also known for looking the other way when black market deals went down in the back rows of the theater, particularly for hard-to-find medicines like penicillin.)

Throughout the restrictive 1940s and 1950s, El Molino was a rare hotspot of liberal thinking, popular entertainment, open eroticism, rebellion against censorship and accessible grandeur. Some of the biggest Spanish stars of the day performed regularly, including singer and performer la Bella Dorita—a former lead and silver-miner’s daughter who went from being practically homeless to becoming an internationally-recognized performer.

For the next several decades, El Molino would continue to flourish, and was considered to be one of the jewels in the crown of both the local and national arts scenes.

The Post-Franco Years

From French stars like Yvette Rene in the mid-1970s to more recent shows produced in-house but titled in English—Made in Parallel and Made in El Molino—El Molino has tried hard to give itself an international face-lift without losing its local essence. In 1976, it  was chosen to receive the first annual Sebastià Gasch FAD Award, which recognizes innovation in the field of entertainment.

Vicenta Fernández continued to run the venue in the decades after her husband died, in spite of the financial troubles the venue would continue to suffer and the myriad changes that occurred within the Spanish, Catalan and Barcelona arts scenes after the dictatorship ended.

But in spite of years of fighting to stay afloat, the venue would ultimately close in 1997.

El Molino Today

Spanish company Ociopuro would later buy the theater, beating out Russian investors who were also interested in the property, and ultimately investing millions in aesthetic and logistical renovations. El Molino reopened in 2010, managed by Elvira Vázquez.

The latest renovations maintained Raspall’s façade, but the inside was completely gutted and redesigned by architect Fernando Salas. The venue was also expanded—without damaging either the iconic windmill by Alemany or la Bella Dorita’s piano, which is still at the venue—in order to offer a modernized experience both to patrons and performers.

The inside now has five floors, including an underground level that houses the kitchen and storage. Above that is the stage and seating for the audience, which are decorated in black and red, and feature LED panels that change color and intensity.

The third floor is a terrace and bar—called the Golden Bar—located directly behind the blades of the windmill. In it reside two golden figures meant to represent flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya and French American entertainer and activist Josephine Baker. There is also a list, appropriately written in gold, of the names of a number of performers who graced the stage of the old El Molino, as well as a photo mural by artist Josep Ribas of the Catalan exotic dancer Christa Leem.

The top floors house lighting and stage machinery and behind all this are dressing rooms and rehearsal spaces with ceiling-to-floor mirrors.

Until the pandemic forced El Molino to close its doors, it offered burlesque, comedy, music, dance, film screenings, jazz nights, rumba, cabaret and was available to rent for private events—everything from weddings to private dinners, from music and dance rehearsals to the former Catalan President Pasqual Maragall’s birthday party.

However, in spite of its long and storied history, El Molino had never recovered its status as a top spot on the local or national cultural scene. It had chronic difficulties attracting the same steady stream of patrons that it did a century ago, and as a result, its economic problems were dire.

El Molino’s managing company Ociopuro had trouble recouping its expenses even before the pandemic and tried to sell El Molino several times. Finally, in early July of 2021 the Ajuntament de Barcelona announced that it had purchased the centenary Paral·lel theater, for €6.2 million. As part of the city's Cultural Rights Plan, it will take on a new life in 2022 as a cultural center “for the revitalization, training and exhibition of the paratheatrical arts and new scenic languages ​​of Barcelona."