Sketches of Spain served its last pintxo on July 19, closing the book on six years as Oak Cliff’s only pincho bar. The Bishop Arts spot built its following on Basque-style small plates meant to be pierced with a toothpick and shared across a table: patatas bravas, boquerones, ham and cheese croquettes, quail egg-topped chorizo, and a paella that regulars treated as the closest thing to a trip to Spain available in Dallas. The send-off came the Sunday before closing, an informal goodbye party where $20 bought unlimited pintxos and a glass of sangria alongside, presumably, a lot of stories about the place.
What makes this a story worth following rather than just another closure is what’s replacing it. Javier GarcÃa del Moral, who co-owns Sketches of Spain along with its sister business, The Wild Detectives, the bookstore-bar a few blocks away on West 8th Street, announced he’s expanding Wild Detectives directly into the vacated space at 321 N. Zang Blvd. It’s not a relocation. The original Wild Detectives location stays open exactly as it is. This is a second chapter, built in the room Sketches leaves behind.
Del Moral has been careful to frame it as more than a copy-paste second location. In a statement, he described the plan as an opportunity to rethink how the business presents books, culture, and community altogether, rather than simply duplicating what already exists on West 8th. Chef Iñaki Betran, the chef who built Sketches of Spain’s reputation over its six years, is staying on as part of whatever comes next, which suggests the new concept won’t abandon the kitchen entirely even if the pincho format itself doesn’t carry over intact.
The timeline points toward October, with del Moral targeting an opening in time for this year’s Hay Festival Forum, the Dallas edition of the international literary and arts festival that Wild Detectives has hosted events around before. That’s still a loose target rather than a locked date, and no name or concept details have been announced publicly yet. What is confirmed: the space stays in the same family of owners, the chef stays, and Oak Cliff loses a pincho bar only to gain whatever Wild Detectives decides its next chapter should look like.
