Madame Jasmine

Nobody knows exactly when she was born but everybody says that her skin had a powerful jasmine smell. Madame Jasmine was born in the former Chinese neighborhood of Barcelona, currently El Raval, and her mother was selling flowers in a remote era, when the city was preparing for the first Universal Exhibition in 1888.

Madame Jasmine possessed a curious sweetness in complete contrast with the dirty, full of thieves Ciudad Condal. Very soon, she caught all eyes. Her success as a courtesan of El Chino was growing as the walls of the area where extending to create what is now called the Eixample neighborhood.

Around 1907 she became a lady of a brothel-house located on Robadors street, from which the ‘Golden Book’ still can be found. Fascinated by her beauty, many men tried, in vain, to get her out of barrio Chino but she had a spirit that needed to live freely.

Falling in love of the bastard son of Santiago Salvador, Madame Jasmine had his child. Unfortunately he died during the hard repression in the Tragic Week of 1909. Alone and pregnant, she opened an opium smoking house and got an apartment on San Jeronimo street which later was destroyed, like many others, to form what is now known as Rambla del Raval. One morning in 1917, her son tragically died decapitated by a cart on Rambla de las Flores. Life of Madame Jasmine had been also left headless and so, she locked herself in her apartment, between opium smoke and empty bottles. She went out just once a week to Boqueria market, holding a headless doll in her arms. There are people who say the skin covering the doll’s neck was actually the skin of her defunct son.

Her personal objects live now on Rambla del Raval 22 and there are pieces of her everyday life, found in the apartment on San Jeronimo street right before being destroyed on February 8, 2003. Going for the first time inside Madame Jasmine without knowing the story is like entering an old attic. It immediately charms you along with the french music that takes you to the old times when Jasmine lived. You may be sitting on one of her chairs, look at her pictures and touch her sewing machine which is now transformed into a table. All these elements are mixed together with ironic contemporary pieces like down lighted toy heads, switched heads of Barbie and Ken that are holders of the bathroom doors, or lizards stuck to the ceiling.

Either for eating the best sandwiches in town, drinking a good coffee or a glass of wine, or just for taking a glimpse on Madame Jasmine’s life, this bar is a landmark in Barcelona.

When we lose memory, when streets are erased from the maps, we are the ones who have to rewrite the stories. Madame Jasmine existed, she exists today and maybe tomorrow she will be born again in one of the sidewalks of the ex-barrio Chino.