Why the Famous Café del Mar in Cartagena Closed

If you take a look around at tips on things to do in Cartagena, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Café del Mar. This bar and restaurant, atop the colonial walls of Cartagena has long been a favorite of tourists and is arguably one of the city’s longest running and most iconic places.

However, as of September 2, 2024, Café del Mar has been shut down by Cartagena’s authorities. It’s unclear if it or another similar business might reopen sometime in the future, but for the time being, Café del Mar is shut down.

It’s the result of an over 10 year court case, one that supposedly began after a dispute between neighbors but has grown to be embroiled in controversy and debate over the intersection between tourism, public space, and access to historic sites, an issue that will continue to loom over Cartagena as tourism grows ever larger.

If you’d like to learn more about why Cartagena’s Café del Mar was shut down, I’ll go over some details of the case, and share my opinion on its closing in this post.

A Short History of Cartagena’s Café del Mar

Café del Mar opened in 2002, owned by a German named Peter Kreill and a Colombian named Carlos Sánchez García.

It sat atop the Baluarte (or Bastion) de Santo Domingo, which was actually the first section of Cartagena’s wall to be built, with construction beginning in 1602.

The larger baluartes like this one were originally built as sort of free standing fortresses and only later connected by shorter walls. If you look at an aerial photo of the site, you can see it has a sort of pentagon shape.

When it opened, Café del Mar arranged a contract with the entity that is responsible for maintaining Cartagena’s walls and fortress, the Escuela Taller Cartagena de Indias (ETCAR).

Essentially, they paid a monthly rent and were responsible for cleaning and maintaining the area in exchange for being able to run their business there.

And, a successful business it certainly seemed to be.

It’s a privileged location, not just because it was on the wall, but because it was on the part of the wall that juts the farthest out, with a nearly direct and unobstructed view out to where the sun sets over the Caribbean.

That made it a famous landmark and an iconic place to have a drink with the sunset in Cartagena.

Why Café del Mar Was Forced to Close

Café del Mar was forced to close due to a final result of a lawsuit filed all the way back in 2014 that alleged the bar and restaurant disobeyed the terms of the original contract and, in effect, violated Colombian citizens’ rights of access to their national heritage.

The main complaint seems to be that by roping off where their tables were Café del Mar prevented free access to an area that should be open to all Colombians, but the suit also noted that they violated the terms of the contract by hanging banners, using the guard post for business purposes, and altering part of the structure.

It also alleged that there was not an open bidding process for the contract and the rental price was lower than a reasonable market rate would suggest.

The lawsuit was filed by David García Gómez, who I can’t find much public information on beyond his name in news articles on the closure.

However, digging through the actual final court order to close Café del Mar, I found a pretty juicy nugget buried in the section that covers the history of the case.

Apparently, in earlier proceedings Café del Mar’s lawyers alleged the suit was filed as a result of a personal grievance between García and Kreill, who had a dispute over a terrace in a building they both lived in. They alleged that García didn’t care about the supposed violations of the contract or public access to the space, but that this was simply a personal vendetta to get the business shuttered or taken away from Kreill.

Yes, I promise I’m being serious!

You can consult point 10.1 on page 6 of the order here to read this allegation. This dissenting opinion from one of the members of the Consejo del Estado also basically argues against the opinion due to the argument that the origin of the suit was simply to find an excuse to negatively affect Kreill, not an authentic complaint about the use of public space by Café del Mar.

In fact, García actually withdrew his complaint in 2016, but because he filed it under a mechanism that allows for individuals to sue in the public interest (García as plaintiff was designated an “actor popular”), the case continued.

Anyways, although the suit was filed in 2014, it took until 2019 for the Tribunal Administrivo del Bolívar, sort of like the district court of Bolívar, the department, similar to a state, that Cartagena is part of, to make a decision.

On August 13, 2019, it agreed in part with García and ruled that Café del Mar did violate the contract and the public right to access the historic site and the area was rented at a below market rate, although it did find that they had not damaged the site.

Café del Mar and the Cartagena municipal government appealed this decision.

On November 21, 2022, the Consejo de Estado ruled against them, agreeing with the earlier decision and ordering the Escuela Taller to end the contract with Café del Mar and come up with another way to administer the site that didn’t impede public access to it.

If you delve into the order linked above, you can find a long, convoluted legal discussion in Spanish that in essence says a public site like the wall can’t be part of a rental contract. It argues businesses can use those types of spaces but through arrangements that, in their language, imply “compatible”, not “exclusive” use.

Doing my best to cut through the legalese in a second language, I guess that means something along the lines of you can pay for a license to set up your hot dog stand in the park, but you can’t rent the park to use for your hot dog stand.

Yeah, this is just semantics, but I guess that’s the law for you.

It’s worth noting that this decision didn’t necessarily rule out leaving a business on the site or even that Café del Mar could continue opearting on the site, only that they couldn’t have rental contract for the space.

However, it seems no other legally viable arrangement was ever reached.

On January 25, 2023, Café del Mar and ETCAR were ordered by the Consejo de Estado to terminate their contract with the Baluarte de Santo Domingo to be returned to ETCAR’s sole administration within 6 months and any future arrangement would have to walk the line between compatible and exclusive.

It seems that order was finally carried out nearly 18 months later with the formal forced closure of Café del Mar by Cartagena’s authorities on September 2, 2024.

Will Something Take Café del Mar’s Place?

For the time being, it appears the area will remain a public space.

The week after the closure of Café del Mar, the Instituto de Patrimonio Cultural (IPCC) announced in this Instagram post that they would be organizing cultural and artistic presentations Thursday-Sunday evenings starting at 5 pm atop the Baluarte de Santo Domingo, or what they are calling the “Baluarte de la gente,” or the “people’s bastion.”

That post gives me the impression that is meant to be permanent, but I imagine it might also depend on turnout.

Also, even as the mayor also has taken to calling this the “people’s bastion,” his tweet here about the closure suggests they plan to rent the space again at a higher price with the condition that the area not be cordoned off.

So, it’s possible something else opens here soon. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked if Café del Mar reopened at some point.

I guess it’s also possible the space becomes something akin to the Plaza de la Trinidad, maybe with some food and drink vendors. Or maybe it just remains a public park kind of space.

My Take on Café del Mar’s Closure

I have mixed feelings Cartagena’s Café del Mar being forced to close.

On one hand, the history major in me feels like this is a historic site and should be treated as such, open to the public for anyone to enjoy, and preferably with some form of recognition of the site’s historical significance.

Honestly, what percentage of the tourists that visited Café del Mar know that this was the first part of the walls constructed?

How many of them know it was constructed to defend the place where Francis Drake crossed a narrow narrow sandbar from Bocagrande to attack the city?

How many of them know that the bathrooms are built inside what were once ramps up to cannon emplacements embedded in the walls halfway up in a fairly historically unique design?

And I’d dare to ask how many average Cartageneros know those things?

There ought to be historic signs, markers, and maps explaining this history.

Speaking of the average Cartagenero, I also think it was somewhat problematic that most of them probably felt like Café del Mar was all but inaccessible to them, an issue I hear more about as tourism grows and more and more smaller, cheaper establishments in Centro and Getsemaní are replaced with business catering primarily to tourists.

Comments on social media and news stories about Café del Mar’s closure seem to largely reflect this sentiment.

I also watched during my decade living in Cartagena as Café del Mar gradually expanded to include nearly the entirety of the part of the wall facing the sea, blocking the “Café del Lado” area open to the public and giving the argument that they prevented free access to this site a lot of weight.

That being said, while I always found Café del Mar to be overpriced and wasn’t a fan of the techno music that, in my opinion, didn’t fit the location, I definitely enjoyed a drink with the view here many times. Susana and I used to enjoy the food, but it had declined quite a bit in quality in more recent years as did the overall service.

Or maybe it didn’t and it just felt that way as more neat places with creative cocktails opened up over time and it felt more and more like a tourist trap rather than one of the fancier places around.

I would still take with friends and family visiting to Café del Mar and felt it was worth the premium price and just ok drinks for the view and unique location atop the wall though.

As representatives of Café del Mar point out in this article arguing against the closure, I also do sincerely think they were pretty decent stewards of the site. It was kept clean, and the images of the Cartagena and Colombian flags atop the walls were truly iconic images of Cartagena, DJs and bright lights set up in the guardhouse notwithstanding.

They also did employ a lot of people, people who will now be without a job. Susana worked at Café del Mar while she put herself through college and has mostly good things to say about how she was treated as an employee.

Still, my BS radar goes up pretty quick when I hear business owners talk about how great they are for employing people and roll their employees out to protest with social media posts while the owner has said nothing publicly that I can find. That article linked also goes out of its way to mention how they employ single mothers, which feels a little virtue signally to me.

While they aren’t wrong, they’ve known this day was not only possible but likely, to come for nearly 2 years.

If they’re so high and mighty and care so much about their workers, why didn’t they come up with some plan to support their transition to other jobs or plan to reopen elsewhere in that time?

Although then again, this whole issue supposedly began because two presumingly wealthy individuals had a personal spat.

I guess in a perfect world, Café del Mar would have never been opened here.

In the non perfect world we are living in, I would have been perfectly fine with it staying, perhaps with a more limited use of the space, some historical markers, and maybe a change to the music.

In that imaginary perfect world, a really cool cultural space with historic markers, perhaps where you could still enjoy a much more reasonably priced drink, tinto, ice cream, or raspao might take its place.

In the world we are living in, color me skeptical.

I saw a number of well intentioned investments in parks during my years living in Cartagena like the area around Mall Plaza or the park over the tunnel in Crespo that fell into disrepair after a few years.

I will say that most of the walls and the Castillo San Felipe are in much better shape than I remember when I arrived in Cartagena, so maybe ETCAR can succeed in maintaining the space themselves. Still, I can’t say I’ll be shocked to find a mostly abandoned area with litter, old, tattered or no flags, and some whiffs of urine to go with the sunset in a few years.

Perhaps a happy medium is something akin to what the Plaza de la Trinidad has become.

From what I understand, the possibility that the area will be administered by another private entity remains on the table, and, if I’m being honest, that’s what I anticipate will happen.

While I don’t disagree with the notion they were paying less than what the site was worth, there’s something inherently hypocritical about patting yourself on the back for reopening the space to the general public while also saying the private business that was there didn’t pay enough rent and they plan to get its true worth from someone else.

That’s even more the case if you consider, as this article points out, that other businesses on the walls and fortifications of Cartagena pay even less than what Café del Mar was paying.

I suspect that what really happened here after such a long delay from the initial ruling and the fact that this seemed to come as some sort of surprise to the management and workers of Café del Mar despite that long delay is that they couldn’t agree to a price and/or there’s backroom politics at play, and that the city will attempt to re “rent” the area at a higher price with some clever semantics in whatever arrangement they reach.

Regardless of what happens, I expect everyone to give themselves a cynical pat on the back about preserving the site, “saving” the Baluarte de Santo Domingo, and maybe even throwing in a bit about doing something nice for single mothers too.

I guess if it includes some historical markers, I’ll live with that and hopefully even get to enjoy a decently priced drink with some decently tasteful music.

What do you think about Café del Mar’s closure?

Let me know in the comments.