José Gutiérrez Solana painted La tertulia del café de Pombo in 1920, at the request of his friend Ramón Gómez de la Serna, a writer linked to the avant-garde movement in Spain. The painting captures a singular moment in Spanish intellectual life during the 1920s, between the dark connotations of España Negra and the renewal brought by the Generation of '98. A recent conservation analysis has revealed previously unknown details about the painting, leading to new interpretations.