If you have ever dined in a Spanish bar, cafe, or restaurant and grabbed a napkin from the ubiquitous small metal dispensers, you will be familiar with the most intriguing feature of the wafer-thin servilletas: how utterly functionally useless they are.
Don't bother using them to mop up spilled liquid, as they are less likely to soak up the spillage than protect it with an impermeable barrier. Never make the mistake of blowing your nose in them when you have a cold or hay fever: they'll just spread the mess to your hands. Their papery texture, originally meant to keep hands clean while picking up oily snacks, has somehow endured despite their most common purpose being to clean fingers and lips. For this, they are far from effective, and you end up flying through half a dozen for every croqueta.
Yet these humble serviettes are a deeply cherished part of the Spanish way of life. Piling scrunched up servilletas on a plate after use may seem logical, yet in some establishments patrons simply chuck them on the ground, along with olive pits and other detritus from snacking. A floor littered with servilletas is a sign of a humble and authentic bar. 'The servilletas are made of paper,' reads a sign at Bar Alonso in Madrid's Prosperidad neighborhood, 'and just like prawn shells, they're to be thrown on to the floor.' However, this custom is not universally loved, and other establishments have campaigned against it, making it less common now.
The Art of the Servilleta
The serviettes' useless papery texture has one great upshot: they are easily printable with all kinds of text and monochrome imagery. Even the standard servilleta, which thanks you with the phrase 'gracias por su visita,' can be a source of juvenile amusement. In university days, many students knew how to fold them so the text instead read 'gracias puta.'
The real joy lies in bars and restaurants that pay extra for personalized servilletas. Madrid-based photographer Felipe Hernandez has been collecting these gastronomic mementoes from down-to-earth restaurants across Spain since 2014. By 2017, he had accumulated over 150, prompting him to photograph them on a white marble slab in his studio and upload them to a dedicated Instagram account. Last month, he released the book Servilletas, containing 600 of the 1,000-plus napkins in his collection.
Some napkins use the Post-It-sized space to boast of culinary prowess: 'They say it's the best roasted lamb and suckling pig in Madrid,' declares Restaurante El Senador. Others match illustrations with their name, like the doves on napkins at Marisquería La Paloma. Favorites include the servilletas at Bilbao's Melilla y Fez, which carry an illustration of their famed pintxos morunos (grilled lamb skewers), since cleaning oily fingers with a picture of the dish that caused the mess is a lovely touch.
Resistance to Homogenization
Such small visual quirks feel even more special given the growing homogenization of Spain's gastronomic sector. 'This book captures the resistance of our old-school bars against this trend, and the importance of supporting them given how our city centres are losing their identities,' Hernandez says. 'Since the graphic often relates to the food that a place serves, you can even see cultural and regional differences reflected in the serviettes.' Newer restaurants are less likely to have personalized servilletas, and many older establishments have ditched them to cut costs.
Like many local businesses in Spanish cities, some places featured in Hernandez's book have struggled with gentrification and tourism. Mesón Planeta, a Madrid restaurant whose serviette once boasted of Galician meats and octopus, closed four years ago after failing to keep up with rising rents. For former regulars, this book is one of the few physical remnants of the place.
While individual establishments may perish, the servilleta lives on. Their enduring ineffectiveness is a joyful defiance of the relentless 'optimisation' that defines our era. As Hernandez writes in the book's introduction, the appeal of the servilleta lies in 'the beauty of the useless.' Servilletas: Spanish Napkins is published by Ojos de Buey.
