Bajos de Argüelles
Named after the Argüelles neighborhood, this term refers to the row of ground-floor shops that for decades concentrated its nightlife.
The Bajos de Argüelles are the row of ground-floor premises at the foot of the neighborhood’s buildings, around the streets of Andrés Mellado and Gaztambide. The neighborhood that lends them its name recalls Agustín Argüelles, a liberal politician of the Cortes of Cádiz, and was built in the last third of the nineteenth century on the grounds of the Montaña del Príncipe Pío.
Many people in Madrid knew them by another name: the “bajos de Aurrerá,” after a supermarket that occupied one of those premises. The word comes from the Basque aurrera, “forward.”
From the 1980s, in the thick of the movida, these premises filled with bars. In the nineties they peaked as one of the largest clusters of rock and heavy metal venues in Europe. Names like the Tuareg, open since 1987, survive from that era.