In Madrid, in case you don't know, there is a bar run by a Chinese, Chen Xianwei, who, like so many other chinified Spanish bars, has absorbed and mimicked the Carpet-Vetonic idiosyncrasy. While other compatriots of his execute, with notorious cooking skills, the infectious menu of fritangas, moth-eaten viands and even the masterful way of pouring the beer, in addition to the greasy bars, this particular Chinese has managed to copy something else very much ours: the national Catholicism.

I have been to this bar several times in its new location (it was previously owned by Chen in Usera and called Bar Oliva), always in the company of red friends and fans of experiences beyond the limits of comprehension, and I have observed it all with the perplexed gaze of Lluis Carandell. The place, wrapped with flags of the Aguilucho and Falange, has under the portraits of Franco and Primo de Rivera and the red and black banners much more junk of the old regime. In the opinion of some, they will be cursed and dangerous objects: to mine, threatening and harmless curiosities, like the fossils of the T-Rex.

There is a strange atmosphere where you don't know who is blowing coffee ironically and who is asking for carajillo with authenticity. It's the same as when you look at the polls of voting intentions or take a look at Twitter, only with the typical tranquility of a swimming pool in Teruel.

To make it clear, the mummy of Queipo de Llano should be fucked in the ass. But if the Law of Democratic Memory were to touch this bar, then it would be razing a garden of delicate exotic plants that we will never see again. The bar of the Chinese facha of Madrid, which is now called Una Grande y Libre, should not only be left out of the usual tawdry duel with clubs, but it should be part of the corners protected by National Heritage.

Reducing this unheard-of site to a cancellable fascist temple is like killing the last coelacanth to snack on gristle. The world, in its devilish complexity, in its unpredictability, in its poetry product of combinatorics, presents us from time to time with challenges that seem simple but are not. They may be non-linear equations, chess games against electronic demons or the existence of a place like this in the heart of a working class and immigrant neighborhood.

Let's see: ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about the bar of a Chinese fascist! Saying this should stop the demolition machines!

"Let's see: ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about the bar of a Chinese facha! To say this should stop the demolition machines!"

A Chinese who came to Spain, set up a bar and gives away calendars with the ID of Francisco Franco Bahamonde on the back, and exhibits swords from Toledo, and wants to sell you cups that turn any liquor you put in them into Sovereign. A Chinese facha, I repeat, who spouts philippics about the greatness of Franco with his Chinese accent, changing the L and the R! Who tells you, if you ask for wine, that he has it from Ribera!

Phenomena like this must be approached with curiosity and tact, with perplexity, even with care, in case blinking too hard dissolves the ensalmo. One must approach these bizarre, inexplicable things without ever being dragged into the predictable and Manichean mire of value judgments.

The other day in the program Cuatro Al Día, hosted by Ana Terradillos, they made a live connection with Chen Xianwei and his bar, and the poor collaborators were unable to face the prodigy that was happening before their eyes. There they began to discuss whether that bar is like a Herriko Taberna, and whether one thing or the other should be banned, without anyone putting into action the sixth sense, which is the sense of wonder.

Good old Chen, who felt attacked, became like a monkey and began to spout fascist and Francoist outbursts, and I was rolling on the floor with laughter, ecstatic with the show, while Ana Terradillos cut the connection apologizing to the audience, who had just witnessed one of the most Carandelian, Buñuelesque and Berlanguian scenes of television.

Ah, the literal interpretations of the world, how they simplify it, how they reduce it to greasy mush. The Chinese facha is as valuable a specimen for human diversity as the black man of Vox or that communist aristocrat who was wanted by Interpol, Alejandro Cao de Benós, the representative of North Korea on earth. Fascinating creatures like these are not for the eyes of the stubborn.

"Fascinating creatures such as these are not for the eyes of the obtuse."

Morally judging the existence of a place like that doesn't make the slightest sense. It is something that happens, like the rainbow or the Victory of Samothrace, and that must be appreciated and interpreted by everyone with no other predisposition than the one that leads us to undertake an unlikely adventure.

As if it were not amusing enough that a Chinese man has wrapped his establishment in Francoist paraphernalia, it turns out that the waitresses there are black, I think Dominican. It is, therefore, a bar opened and supported by the work of immigrants, in a neighborhood of immigrants and workers, and when they serve you a beer they bring it with a ham tapa with which Chen claims to detect converted Jews, as if we were in the 16th century. One of his regular parishioners, Mijail, is Moldavian, and Chen calls him the communist. They have heated discussions together that are a caricature of us, of the Spaniards. An imitation that is, in reality, a parody of us.

Whether all this joke is voluntary or involuntary is the least of it. It doesn't matter why that bar is there, but what a marvel its existence is!