A Tabanco in the Heart of Jerez

In the very heart of Jerez, between two of the city's most emblematic buildings and a stone's throw from the Teatro Villamarta and the Post Office building, stands “El Pasaje”, considered the oldest tabanco in the city. It was opened by its first owner, Don José González Navarro, on 16 December 1925, a year of glittering memories, when the King and Queen of Spain, Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg, came to crown the Virgen del Carmen in the Parque González Hontoria, an occasion celebrated with all kinds of cultural events, opera and a bullfight.

But before it became a tabanco with live flamenco, at the start of the 20th century “El Pasaje” had been a grocer's shop and then the headquarters of a peña, a club where the waiters of Jerez would meet. In the early 1920s it became Don Domingo Jiménez's tabanco “La Fortuna”, until in 1925 it changed its name to the current “El Pasaje” (“The Passage”), because the premises have two entrances: the main one at Calle Santa María 8, and the rear one on Calle Mesones 5.