Despite the legend that precedes them, members of Café Quijano say they barely remember the chaos during the nearly 30 years they’ve been on the road. The trio of brothers formed by Manuel (León, 58 years old), Óscar (56) and Raúl Quijano (54), whose music is a Spanish emblem of canalleo, fun and the invitation to take the second to last, seems, for a moment, to distance themselves from the world they represent in the popular imagination. It is not known whether this is selective memory, whether what happens at Café Quijano stays at Café Quijano, or whether we are truly faced with a remarkable case of separation between artist and work, until, at another time, regarding the brothers’ oldest hobby of photography, the following story emerges from the conversation.
“I spent a year and a half accompanying a Miami Beach police detective and creating a photo reportage on the world of the police. Basically it was about going on patrol, being his partner, with my police jacket, as if I were any policeman,” Manuel tells ICON, with the passion with which you would tell someone that yesterday you went to process the electronic signature certificate. “It was through a mutual friend, who introduced me to a detective who was born in Alicante and left for the United States at a very young age. He grew up there, served in the Marines, joined the Miami Beach department and we became very good friends.”
Nothing happened that really shocked you? “There were all the stories… You went to a kidnapping, to save someone who had been kidnapped, or you were involved in a shooting around the corner or you went to an airport to look for people who had been extradited to federal prison. A little bit of everything. It became normal.” The next time another journalist tries to extract extraordinary stories from the Quijanos, keep in mind that this is their standard of normality.
Unless we have a movie like that lethal weapon (1987) where one of the two police colleagues sings at Café Quijano, the service, for those interested, was published in 2011 and can be seen on Manuel’s website. Other experiences in Miami, much earlier, are those that shaped the lyrics of Miami1990 (Warner Music Spain), the album that the group released this year, a memory of those “times of Sonny Crockett, white Ferrari and beige suit”, as he begins by describing the song that opens the album, the first nightbased, as promised, on the night the singer first arrived in Miami, October 2, 1990.
“Imagine that your hometown is León and suddenly you are in a completely different place, which is experiencing a very strong global explosion, which is fashionable, where everything is new, fantastic and a million things happen,” he recalls, this time, with emotion.
“Now it makes less of an impression, because one is more used to seeing it on TV, everything is more globalized and more similar. But then everything was big, the typical American cars, the big trucks, the roads, Coca-Cola, popcorn, everything was big in the cinema.” Óscar, the second Quijano, says that his older brother acted as a vanguard, as “in love with cars and motorcycles”, to “have a look and do a bit of shopping”. “As soon as we started going, we loved it and stayed. Miami is an inviting city, with a lot of flavor and a lot of life,” he says. “We were very young and we found a second home there, we have our family there,” adds Manuel.
Whether they stop at home is another story. On the day of the interview, on a terrace near the Plaza de Santa Bárbara in Madrid, they paid a morning visit to RN with acoustic performance included. The previous week they were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in venues in Berlin, Zurich and Brussels, in front of hundreds of mostly Spanish-speaking people, although sometimes they get surprises from people who don’t speak “ni papa” and have become fond of their music by chance. They have concerts announced until May 2026. “Before you came to a village in any city in Spain, then you went out, you were there at the festival and you had fun. Now it happens less to us,” admits Raúl Quijano, the youngest of the three.
“On these big tours, if you don’t rest two or three days, man, you can hold on, but you have no voice,” explains Óscar. “The important thing to have a voice is to rest and sleep. If you party a lot, with what that entails, you don’t go on tour. I remember that in 2005 we were with Carlos Santana and he told us that he never did more than three or four concerts in a row. It seemed strange to us, but now we’re twenty years old and we’re starting to understand it. We’re very good, we’re healthy, we play sports and that helps, but it’s a bit difficult.”
The one in the center of Quijanos interrupts his presentation to gravely warn the singer that a small piece of the tortilla skewer he is savoring has fallen onto the seat and will stain his pants. “Then it’s my turn to take it to the dye!” we joke (or not), once the crisis is over.
“Is that what I saw there? croquette?”, For his part, Manuel asks the twenty-year-old waiter who, a few minutes later, in addition to bringing croquettes, will overcome his shyness to confirm that his customers are indeed Café Quijano. When they take the portrait that accompanies this article, the brothers are also attacked by a very young and enthusiastic girl, who takes several photos of them with her cell phone after stating that she adores them and that the first concert she saw was theirs.
“Many children who listened to their father’s music, who played it in the car or at home, now come to visit us. Younger than you might imagine,” says the singer. “Nostalgia is part of being human and music generates a lot of nostalgia. That’s why the songs of the bands that have marked your life bring back so many memories.”
Marital status: member of Café Quijano
To get back to the heart of the matter: are Café Quijano’s songs, often stories of turbulent nocturnal experiences, impossible loves or lovers in every port, narrated in the first person, reality or fiction? “Impossible love stories, all true!”, replies the singer with a half smile, before taking a sip of soda. “We’ve always tried to defend ourselves gracefully from people who think that we are the protagonists of the stories we tell. But on this album, yes, most of what we tell are stories that we have lived.” One of the most important cuts of their new collection is Bachelor’s degree in Cumbia; However, the three Quijanos make it clear that they are happily coupled. Another element of the legend exploding in the air. Contradiction in Miami.
“We’re single, logically, like everyone else, but we haven’t been for a long time,” says Óscar, married to a woman from Miami. Manuel, author of the text, explains: “Bachelor Cumbia He speaks with an ironic tone about that crisis, sometimes existential, that both men and women have at a certain age. There are certain moments when you don’t know very well what you want. Sometimes you say “gosh, how good of a couple are you”, but then you’re in a relationship and you’re like “how good are you as a single”. He never stops facing the nonconformity of the human being himself.” There is no magic recipe, the singer acknowledges, to avoid this frustration. “Balance is difficult in anything. Now we need to lead an orderly and successful life, because, in the end, everyone’s goal is to live in harmony with what they do, with what they think and with the foundations of their life and dreams. You have to make an effort for this, whether you are single or in a relationship. When everyone is in a relationship, they want to feel good. Then, everyone’s circumstances make the relationship successful or not, but it depends on many things…”
In one of their hits from twenty years ago they sang: “How great is this love / To be able to love more than two”. Given that there seems to be a youthful shift among its audience, is Café Quijano familiar with polyamory, consensual non-monogamous relationships with knowledge from all sides? “That song you just mentioned is polyamory in its purest form,” Óscar says, laughing. «Polyamory, very beautiful, like everything that involves socializing», Manuel resolves. In a more serious tone, Raúl interjects: “We don’t practice polyamory, but we see it well. As we say, the three of us have stable relationships.” “But just because we don’t practice it doesn’t mean we don’t see it very well, they’re different things,” explains the group’s lead vocalist. “We see clearly everything that involves relating on good terms.”
They must know something about healthy relationships to maintain with the group since 1997. “We get along like the brothers we are, with good and not so good moments,” describes little Raúl. “The blood does not reach the river, as in those groups that we all have in mind”. They only had a short break, between 2007 and 2010, which they say was “timely,” without providing further details. Far from betting on a comfortable and easy return, with a continuous album or a re-recording of their successful duets, Café Quijano returned to the studio with the most ambitious project of their career, a series of albums that went against the grain of the market: the trilogy Origins. The bolero (2012-14), which grouped 32 original boleros with the traditional sound of the genre, without the rock or pop fusion of his other works. “It was an unfinished business,” says Manuel. “A repertoire of around thirty unreleased boleros was not something common nor something we know had been done for a long time. We did it and people recognized it, our colleagues in music and the industry gave it the value it had and it nominated us for five Latin Grammys. In winter concerts, in theaters and auditoriums, we continue to do a bolero section.”
What is not missing in their winter and summer concerts are their classics, especially those of The Buddha Tavern (2001), his most famous album, which will turn 25 next year. “The Buddha Tavern (the song) is a watered-down version of what happened in our father’s bar 40 years ago,” says Óscar. That bar in León is still open and, since 2000, has been called La Lola, in honor of the song that made the group famous. As for the woman who gave the song its name, the brothers prefer to keep it a mystery. “Most of the song is performed by a very vital woman, whose name we have never revealed and will not reveal. name,” says the “She’s a journalist,” Óscar offers as the only information. “And she’s 98,” Manuel adds. “No, everything is true except the 98-year-old thing,” objects the intermediary. “She’s still alive and was a woman, as the song reflects, very direct, consistent with her way of thinking. “An exemplary woman!”
Artists as diverse as The Kinks, Los Suaves, Concha Piquer or even Cicatriz have dedicated verses to Lola. What is it with women with that name? “Lola is very bombastic,” the leader reflects. “It seems like a person named Lola also has a lot of poise. It’s a name that creates personality.” Or that precede and create careers.
