Since drinking coffee sharpens and stimulates the senses, coffee shops have always been a meeting place for intellectuals, poets, writers, and artists. The Turks called coffee shops the “schools of the wise” while in England in the seventeenth century they were known as “penny universities” since this is what it used to cost to get in. It is said that the seeds of the French Revolution were buried in Foy Café in Paris, and the American Revolution’s in the Green Dragon in Boston.
The first coffee shop in Europe opened in Oxford in 1650 by a Jewish Turk, followed two years later by another in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. This was the main “boom” in the coffee shops that would then invade England for a century and would have as a result the foundation of institutions as illustrious as The Stock Exchange, The Baltic Exchange, and Lloyds Insurance, all of which began in coffee shops where men who had similar interests got together.
Even after having made such a strong initial impact in Great Britain, Spain is the only country in Europe where the tradition of the coffee shop has not kept going or considered as important as in other places, despite the brief resurgence in the 1950’s. There are three reasons for this though. First the coffee shops that begun in Cromwell, started to change their character, selling alcohol as well as coffee and turned into less attractive places. The second, and probably most important is that in that time none of the British colonies cultivated coffee and this constituted a very high tax on part of the Dutch and French. Also, the foundation of the East Indian Company brought along with them a bigger worry, which came from the government saying, they wanted to sponsor the tea commerce; and thus would do everything they could in their power to promote drinking tea and discouraged coffee drinking. And in third place, it’s easier to prepare a cup of tea then it is to prepare a good cup of coffee.
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