La Calle de Bruselas

La Calle de Bruselas sits directly on Plaza de la Merced, which puts it at the geographic centre of Malaga's small gay quarter - El Carmen is across the square and the bars of Calle Cervantes and Calle San Juan de Letran are a two-minute walk. The concept is a corner of Belgium in Andalusia: wood-panelled interior, Belgian beers on the menu alongside Spanish staples, and a terrace on the square that fills up from breakfast onwards. It is not a gay bar in the strict sense but a long-standing gay-popular one: the location and the relaxed, mixed crowd have made it a fixture of the scene, and it works equally well for a morning coffee, an afternoon snack or a first round before the night moves on to the bars nearby. Open daily from 9am until well past midnight (2am Sunday-Thursday, 3am Friday-Saturday), so it also catches the late crowd when other cafes have closed.