Spanish restaurants in Colombia aren't confined to the capital. Our directory lists venues across Bogotá, Cartagena, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Manizales, Popayán and a handful of smaller towns in the countryside around Bogotá, a spread that reflects both Colombia's own history of Spanish immigration and a more recent wave of Spanish chefs opening restaurants well beyond the obvious big-city spots.
Why so many, and why now
Spanish migration to Colombia isn't a single, recent story. It runs in at least two distinct waves on the historical record. An earlier wave followed the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, as exiles settled across Latin America including Colombia. A later, larger wave of Spanish nationals moved to Colombia and other Latin American countries during Spain's 2008–2013 economic crisis, when unemployment at home pushed working-age Spaniards abroad in search of jobs. Our directory doesn't record which wave, if either, any specific restaurant's founders arrived with, but the general pattern helps explain why Spanish restaurants keep appearing in Colombia across different decades rather than in one single cluster of openings.
Bogotá: the biggest concentration
Bogotá holds the largest number of Spanish restaurants in the country, with a range that runs from decades-old institutions to recent openings. Pajares Salinas, founded in 1953 by Spanish immigrants, is the only Bogotá listing in our directory with a stated founding date that early, and has become one of the city's established dining names in its own right. In the La Macarena neighbourhood, Gaudí specializes in tapas, paellas and sangrias and carries the highest review count of any Spanish restaurant in the country in our data. For something more specific, Barrica Tapas y Cañas built its name around a single specialty, suckling pig, rather than a broad tapas menu, and La Puerta de Alcalá, running more than 24 years, pairs tapas and hams with regular live flamenco music.
Cartagena: two inside the walls, one chef with two Michelin stars
Cartagena has three Spanish restaurants in our directory. Two of them sit inside the walled old town, within easy walking distance of each other. La Tapería in Las Bóvedas serves award-winning paellas alongside Galician-style octopus. A few streets over in Getsemaní, El Peninsular, inside the Hotel Casa Ébano, focuses specifically on Asturian and northern Spanish cooking rather than the more generic southern-Spain tapas format found elsewhere.
The third Cartagena restaurant sits apart from the old town: Erre de Ramón Freixa, on the tenth floor of the Hotel Las Américas, is run by Ramón Freixa, a chef who, according to the restaurant's own listing, holds two Michelin stars (for his flagship restaurant in Spain, not this one). The dining room looks out over the bay, pairing Mediterranean technique with Caribbean ingredients, a different register entirely from the tapas-bar format that dominates the rest of the country's Spanish restaurant scene.
Beyond the big two: Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla and the smaller towns
Away from Bogotá and Cartagena, the spread continues. El Payés in Medellín's El Poblado pairs traditional Spanish cooking with live flamenco music and dance shows. Casa Ibérica in Cali, founded in 2018, describes itself as working with imported Spanish products and traditional recipes. In Barranquilla, Rojo Madrid is run by a chef who placed second in an international paella competition, a specific, checkable credential rather than a generic claim of authenticity.
Smaller towns round out the list in ways that wouldn't show up on a typical Colombia itinerary: Alma Gitana in the colonial town of Villa de Leyva is a small family business built around oxtail as its signature dish, and in Manizales, Ednia describes itself as using fresh ingredients imported directly from Spain, a notable choice for a restaurant outside Colombia's main cities.
The countryside spots worth the detour
A few of the most specific restaurants in the whole directory sit outside any of Colombia's major cities. Auténtiko, on the road between Bogotá and La Calera, is run by a Basque chef and specializes in roasted lamb and traditional stews rather than the tapas format found in the capital. In Chía, just north of Bogotá, Tierra Roja pairs Spanish and Mediterranean dishes, serrano ham and black rice among them, with live music, and has built up nearly 1,400 reviews despite its countryside setting. Near Cali, La Barra de Manolo in the small town of Dapa serves classic tavern tapas like patatas bravas and gambas al ajillo, and has drawn over 1,100 reviews of its own, proof that a Spanish restaurant in Colombia doesn't need a capital-city address to build a following.
What this spread says about the scene
Twenty-three restaurants across nine-plus cities, running from a 1953 institution to a dining room run by a two-Michelin-star chef, is a broader spread than a single big-city itinerary suggests. Colombia's Spanish restaurant scene isn't concentrated in one tourist-facing strip. It runs from the capital's established names to small-town kitchens built around a single dish, which makes it worth exploring beyond whichever city a trip happens to start in.
