La Criolla: The freest cabaret in El Raval
In the basement of number 10 on Carrer del Cid (now Joaquín Costa), right in the heart of Barcelona’s old "Chinatown" district, a cabaret bloomed in 1925 that would redefine the city’s nightlife: La Criolla. For just over a decade, this dimly lit club with wild music and unimaginable freedoms became a symbol of an underground, rebellious, mixed-race Barcelona. A crossroads where excess, bohemia, crime, and creativity pulsed together in unison.
La Criolla wasn’t just a dance hall; it was the nerve center of a subversive Barcelona, far removed from the official image the authorities tried to promote during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship and the later Republic. From the start, the club capitalized on the craze for jazz, Charleston, and Argentine tangos, played both by live orchestras and a cutting-edge electric jukebox, a major technological novelty at the time.
But what truly set La Criolla apart was its atmosphere of absolute freedom. Amid glasses of absinthe and pure cocaine smuggled in from the port, prostitutes, drag queens, criminals, sailors, artists, and curious aristocrats mingled freely. The back rooms served as private spaces for unapologetic sexual encounters. The club even hosted drag competitions, including the now-legendary 1934 Miss Chinatown Drag Queen contest, and embraced a fluidity of gender and sexuality that scandalized the ruling classes.
Unlike other, more formal or elitist venues, La Criolla was radically inclusive. Romani sex workers rubbed shoulders with Filipino sailors, Andalusian pimps debated with Catalan poets, and decadent marquises sipped drinks next to petty criminals. According to journalist Paco Villar, the cabaret fostered “a sort of international of the margins.”
Among its famous regulars were a young Carmen Amaya, writer Jean Genet (who allegedly turned tricks there), painter José Pérez Ocaña, dancer Tórtola Valencia, the legendary Josephine Baker during a brief visit, and even (according to legend) Salvador Dalí. Chroniclers like Josep Maria de Sagarra, journalist César González-Ruano, and Josep Pla wrote about the place with a mix of fascination and scandalized awe.
In 1928, owner Valentín Gabarró revamped the venue in preparation for the 1929 International Exposition. He added box seats for wealthier clientele and revamped the decor with a Caribbean flair, tropical touches that matched the era’s taste for the exotic. The makeover didn’t water down its wild essence; on the contrary, it cemented its reputation as the most dangerous and seductive cabaret in Southern Europe.
To keep some semblance of order amidst the chaos, Gabarró hired José Márquez Soria, better known as “Pepe from La Criolla,” as head of security. His figure became nearly as legendary as the club itself, a tough guy, respected by all, who negotiated with police, kept fights in check, and protected the performers.
La Criolla reached its peak in the early 1930s. It was a must-stop for anyone wanting to experience the raw, alternative side of Barcelona: a city of vice and underworlds, but also of radical modernity, uncensored desire, and artistic and racial fusion.
Pepe’s death in 1936, murdered shortly after opening another venue, marked the beginning of the end. The Spanish Civil War tore apart the social fabric of the Raval. On September 24, 1938, during one of many bombings over Barcelona, a bomb hit La Criolla and destroyed it completely. The neighborhood was burning, and with it disappeared the cabaret that had symbolized its spirit.
Under Franco’s regime, Chinatown was labeled a moral threat and targeted for "cleansing." The authorities erased every physical trace of the venue. Its former location was paved over by Avenida García Morato, now part of the Raval’s modernization.
Though its structure vanished, the myth of La Criolla lived on. Its story has been revived in books like Historia y leyenda del Barrio Chino by Paco Villar, inspired characters in novels and plays, and still echoes in the city’s collective memory.
There have even been immersive theater productions and shows inspired by its legend, such as those staged by Sala Tinta Roja. More recently, contemporary artists like Mama Dousha have reclaimed the cabaret’s name to assert a modern Raval identity: hybrid, resistant, and defiant against gentrification and the exoticized gaze cast on the neighborhood.
The story of La Criolla is also the story of an ambiguous, liminal, mixed Barcelona. A city that has swung between repression and freedom, bourgeois order and joyful anarchy.
La Criolla was many things: a refuge for outcasts, a queer lab before the word even existed, a cabaret where jazz met flamenco and absinthe met street drugs. It was a bomb of life, snuffed out by an actual bomb.
Today, whenever people talk about recovering the Raval’s memory, La Criolla shines like a beacon, of what once was, and of what still pulses beneath the cobblestones.
