A few years ago, I lived in London, and I can't remember his name, so I met an English writer who I'm going to call John, on the old terrace of the legendary coffee cave Los Faroles, in Granada. He was twenty-five years older than me, bald, with a nose that remembered the peak of a fool and had already published several books.

When the ordinary friend who introduced us announced to me as a writer, John asked me why, when and where I wrote. I don't remember wearing the usual booklet and pen with me on the terrace table, but it may have been like this, because I remember perfectly the categorical phrase he threw, with the authority that gave him age and experience: “I can’t understand the writers who write in coffee shops. You can't write a good novel in that place." As John was a novelist, I have no doubt that he had the knowledge of authors shining in the literary coffees scattered around the world, more than enough.

There are dozens of mythical coffee shops that have welcomed famous writers around the world. To give just examples from two cities, I can cite the Café Tortoni in Buenos Aires, where Alfonsina Estorni, Juana de Ibarbourou or José Luis Borges, or the famous and studied Deux Magots and Café de Flore in Paris, from which a great writer passed. Maybe John lived with the feeling that he was better at some time and, even though he recognized the glory of the past, he was not in favor of the coffee writers of today, because he thought that of these was a second, yes, at least, compared to the serious writers of the house.

I've spent many hours in cafes, as a result of my writing resolution, filling the booklets of paintings, happening whatever happens. My progress for the effort was worse in the taverns, because those who wrote under the effects of alcohol lead to roughness, in my case, always, soon after awakening from glory.

I haven't been writing in cafes for years. New writer themes will take my place again. Through it I imagine the second cup of coffee without money, collecting the spoon and licking it, some, absorbed by literature, ideas from literature, others, converted into poets the first and poems the second. I love them when they go inside themselves. Without wishing to apologize for literary isolation and without wanting to fall asleep in bohemian anesthesia, and without pretending to put the work above anything or below anything, I love its activity, turned into a private public search activity. The hum of cafes can be for some a rumor packed with endless distractions, but there are also those who are encouraged by the publicity of the terraces, as if they were poisoned by the fall of life.

When John met me on the terrace of Los Faroles, he took something of mine with him and it was not exactly the approval of his statement. As soon as he heard my name from Euskaldun, he decided to put Iratxe to the protagonist of the novel he was writing and declared me that way. I am sorry not to remember his last name, which at the moment prevents me from obtaining a novel with my protagonist, although I will one day find it. The most interesting thing is that the loan of my name showed that coffee shops and terraces are in one way or another useful for literature, literature and literary authors.