Mazorra places Lavapiés within a wider restructuring of central Madrid driven by gentrification, touristification and increasing socio-spatial inequality. Using a mixed methodology that combines data analysis, in-depth interviews and historiographical review, the article moves between structural change and actor experience. Its key contribution is to demonstrate that neighbourhood transformation is not exhausted by demographic turnover: it also produces new narratives, perceptions and conflicts among those who live in, visit and interpret the area. The methodological operation is therefore double, combining measurable socio-economic change with the discursive field generated by transformation. This is particularly useful for studying cafés, which are simultaneously economic units, visual markers, meeting places and sites where residents, newcomers and tourists articulate different versions of what the neighbourhood is becoming. The paper provides the larger urban scale required to prevent micro-observations from floating free of housing, inequality and metropolitan restructuring. It connects everyday commercial change to Madrid’s increasingly polarised spatial economy.