Two world wars, a republic, a civil strife, almost 40 years of dictatorship, the return of democracy to Spain and a good handful of other events to date. He bar Chucho-Casa Emiliano, in La Orotava, can proudly boast that when these and other events occurred it was there, since 1899 at least. In that it almost rivals in longevity with this same newspaper, DIARIO DE AVISOS, the dean of the Canary Islands press, which was born in La Palma in 1890, only nine years before this place.
Its about oldest bar-bodegón on the islandat least that’s what the Tenerife Gold Medal, granted by the Cabildo a few years ago to those establishments of a diverse business and commercial nature that have been in operation for more than 100 years. And it is that the municipality of La Orotava boasts of having several businesses that exceed the century, as is the case, within this same area of restoration, of the famous confectionery Casa Egón, founded a good handful of years later, in 1916 .
The Island’s Gold Medal diploma, like another similar document, awarded this time by the Orotava City Council for the same reason, is framed in a painting inside Chucho-Casa Emiliano. This lifelong bar -never better said- is located at an authentic crossroads, in the emblematic Cruz del Teide, on the outskirts of the historic town center. A place and its surroundings, as Jesús González Domínguez himself, better known as Chucho, its owner, recalls, which in the 1970s and 1980s was an authentic “commercial and industrial zone”, with several factories, such as the marble , the one made of pumice stone and the one made of blocks, and even one that made bleach, in a building next to the bar, in addition to the municipal slaughterhouse, now converted into a civic and social center, among other places.
The business was founded in 1899 by Chucho’s great-grandfather, Domingo González González, and from that date until now it has remained open to the public. “We have never closed, not even to take vacations,” Chucho proudly emphasizes. The so-called Spanish flu did not close it and neither did COVID-19. In fact, the restrictions caused by the global epidemic have ultimately given a new life to the bar, since it was allowed to set up a terrace to face the vicissitudes of the imposed limitations, which has now become permanent, which has contributed to increase and diversify its clientele. Undoubtedly, a good revitalizing breath for a small hundred-year-old company that aspires to prolong its journey.
“WINE AND PUSSY”
But let’s go in parts. The establishment was “officially” born in 1899 by Domingo González González, a day laborer with an entrepreneurial character who wanted to improve his family circumstances, although Chucho assures that the foundation actually took place many years before, although he has no documentary evidence to corroborate it. .
Chucho’s great-grandfather opened a “wine and chochos” winery, as they say on this island, a business that his son Hermenegildo González continued. The place was in a strategic passage site, right on the road that connected the town center and La Perdoma. A place that little by little, over the years, gradually became urbanized.
The reins of the business were taken over by Hermenegildo’s son, Modesto González, known as Emiliano, who together with his wife, Milagros Domínguez, combined the winery with the sale of groceries, and stayed that way for 41 years until in 1977 when his son Chucho took over. reins of the premises to date, now only as a bar, with some necessary expansion, but preserving the essence and some architectural elements of the original building, such as the wonderful tea beams on the roof. Chucho learned about the trade from a young age, in a family business where local parishioners met to socialize and play pericón or dominoes, and later on table football and billiards. “The best pericón players have come from here,” says the owner of the bar, who recalls that in the past the place sometimes looked like a “casino” because “on Fridays and Saturdays the popular lottery was played among the neighbors.”
ANECDOTES: the municipal elections of 1995
As you can imagine, hundreds of anecdotes have happened in all these years. But, without a doubt, one of the most remembered and celebrated is the one in which the Chucho-Casa Emiliano bar served as an electoral college. A circumstance that few bars can get chest. It was in 1995, in the fifth regional and local elections called in the recovered democracy after the Franco dictatorship. On that occasion, the corresponding headquarters was in one of the premises of the nearby marble factory; However, one day before the elections, the authorities verified that the ground was not very stable, and given the danger it posed, they decided to seek an urgent solution. And they turned to Chucho, who had no objection to giving up the site. Thus, on May 28 (curiously, the date coincides with the next electoral date), the neighborhood deposited their votes in the polls in a bar. “That day no alcoholic beverages were consumed, for the record,” Chucho says sarcastically, who has always been helped by his wife, María Lourdes Quintero López.
The pandemic, and the well-known restrictions, as we mentioned before, dealt a severe blow to their waterline for the hotel and restaurant businesses, although in many cases it also led to an opportunity to reinvent themselves. For Chucho-Casa Emiliano, the equation was very clear: the terrace outside the bar, initially authorized provisionally by the City Council and then fixed, has increased and diversified its clientele, especially in the morning, which tends to come to have breakfast with the claim of their delicious tortilla sandwiches. Chucho, of course, is delighted with this regrowth of his premises.
Will there be a new generation that continues with the bar? Chucho does not reveal many details, only that “there is a relative interested”. Well, let’s see if he cheers up and that the business continues for at least another 100 years…
