Cafe Pamplona Returns to Square

After closing its doors last December, Cafe Pamplona reopened for business this past Saturday, once again serving up cafe con leche and tapas to customers at the Bow Street shop.

Owner Josefina Yanguas, 88, had announced in December that she would retire after operating the cafe since 1959 in the basement of her three-story house. But after considering several offers from people wanting to buy or rent the cafe, she finally decided to simply run it herself again.

“There were a couple people who wanted it, but we never got to any conclusions,” she said. “Finally, one of my customers, who has been coming here for 35 years, asked me why I don’t just open it again. So I called her, and I said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”

Jeffrey P. Smith, who held down stints as a waiter in Pamplona for six years, returned to work there this week.

“The cafe is entrenched in the neighborhood,” he said yesterday while sitting in the shop. “A lot of the people who come here have been coming in for the past 20 to 30 years.”

For a small coffee shop in Harvard Square, Yanguas and her employees take pride in maintaining their simple environment for so long.

“It really hasn’t changed in any significant way since it opened,” said Smith. “The only difference is that she’s not going to come down and do our dishes for us anymore.”

Although her health prevents her from full-time work, Yanguas, who still lives upstairs, said she plans to remain involved with the shop that she has owned for 47 years.

“I missed the coffeehouse,” she said. “I’m too old to work, but I can still run it.”

Regular patrons had reacted with disappointment in December when Yanguas announced her plans to close.

“If this place closes, the real Harvard Square is completely buried,” David Brennan, a patron since the 1970s, told The Crimson at the time. “The free-floating intellectuals may have no place to float free.”

Amalia W. della Paolera ’07, who went to the cafe yesterday, said she was glad about its return to the Square.

“It was the first place I ate freshman year,” she said. “It’s a nice place to go. It’s not the biggest menu selection, but it’s very solid, and the ambience is really nice and quaint.”