The last time I went to Colmado Múrria, I remember it well, I bought a deliciously spicy Menorcan sobrasada made from fajado pork that, at home, lasted us two days. When I could practically still taste it in my mouth, I read in the press that the mythical modernist shop in Barcelona's Eixample was temporarily closing its doors. Although that "temporarily" implied a promise of reopening, I feared the worst: that this unrepeatable establishment, a warehouse of delicacies, founded in 1898 and dedicated to high-end gastronomic products, would indeed reopen after a few months, but would do so converted into a real estate office, an international franchise clothing store, or, even worse, a poke bowl restaurant run by young people with a Hawaiian aesthetic.
My concern grew one morning when I passed by the corner occupied by Múrria (Roger de Llúria with Valencia) and saw that the shutters and the characteristic modernist murals of the establishment, already temporarily closed, had suffered an attack by spray vandals. Something especially serious, since the facade of the premises is included in the Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Catalonia and is part of Barcelona's Modernism Route.
Everything suggested, therefore, that Colmado Múrria would suffer the same fate as El Indio (Carme, 24), another modernist shop in the city that, despite being listed, is in a deplorable state. In 2015, it was announced that it would reopen as a restaurant, but time has passed and the shutters of what was one of Barcelona's most traditional fabric warehouses in the 1930s remain down, accumulating dirt and misery, to the shame of the entire city.
It's a well-known story in Barcelona: a historic business that closes because its clientele has died off or the property owners have raised the rent; one day a graffiti appears on its facade and no one erases it; soon after there are already more than a dozen, also advertising posters and 24-hour locksmith stickers and, of course, nothing happens either... A facade with signs of abandonment is an attractive lure for thieves and hooligans of all kinds because it generates a feeling of impunity that encourages them to steal its decorative elements for profit or simply to destroy them for the sheer pleasure of doing so. When, finally, the gears of the administration start moving to preserve pieces of our history like these, often due to the insistence of a militant neighborhood, it turns out that there is nothing left worth preserving. A shame.
In the case of Colmado Múrria, fortunately, things have not gone that way. Quite the opposite. This Monday, as that "temporarily" promised, the establishment has reopened its doors. They have given it a very successful facelift and added a space for tasting that does not clash at all. Múrria is still Múrria, a business specializing in cheeses, cold cuts, and wines.
According to the DIEC, a "múrria" person is someone "sagacious, astute, cunning, skilled at getting what they want." Well, Joan Múrria, the mustachioed owner, has lived up to his surname. By allying with chef Jordi Vilà and businessman and neighborhood resident Ernest Pérez-Mas, he has managed to find a way to secure the present and future of the business he has run since he was nineteen years old. In a context as difficult for small businesses as the current one, we can consider it an act of heroism or, for that matter, as they say in Catalan, a "murrieria."