La Cueva is the rare Marrakech room that works as both a Spanish tapas bar and a sports bar, and pulls it off without either side feeling like an afterthought. It sits on Rue Ibn Tariq Bnou Ziad in central Guéliz, close enough to the main hotels to be an easy walk.
The pitch is straightforward. La Cueva's own site describes it as a bar à tapas with a live band most nights and a sports-bar setup built around eight screens, with a larger screen rolled out for the big fixtures. That combination is unusual for the city, where sport and live music usually live in separate venues, and it is the main reason a table here can swing from a quiet early drink to a loud match-night crowd.
The space is dim, close and Spanish in spirit, with a small stage that the band takes over after dinner. Service runs friendly and quick, and the room fills fast on weekend nights and whenever a Champions League or a Moroccan league fixture is on, so a reservation by phone is worth it for those evenings. Earlier in the week it settles into a calmer tapas-and-drinks rhythm.
Order a jug of sangria for a table or a cold local beer at the bar; lagers run around 50 MAD and the sangria is the move when a group wants to share. The kitchen is the other reason to come: patatas bravas, croquetas and a rotating board of Spanish small plates are sized to graze across a few rounds. On a match night the screens are the draw, so grab a seat with a sightline early and let the kitchen feed the table between halves. Skip the quiet-corner expectation; this is a room built for noise.
The location is central and walkable from most Guéliz addresses, a few minutes from Avenue Mohammed V and a short petit-taxi from Hivernage. La Cueva keeps the doors open until 2am every night, which makes it a dependable late stop. The trade-off is volume: between the band and the football it is rarely a place for conversation, so anyone after a calm glass should plan around the quieter early evenings.
Best time to go is from 9pm on a weeknight for tapas and a band without the crush, or whenever a fixture is on if the match is the point. La Cueva suits sports fans who also want to eat well, groups after sangria and small plates, and travellers who miss a proper Spanish bar. For other angles on a Guéliz night, the cocktails at Baromètre and the brasserie tables at Grand Café de la Poste are close by. Find it in our guide to the best sports bars in Marrakech and the city's beer-and-bar map, part of the wider Marrakech bar guide and our round-up of the city's best bars.
The dual identity is what keeps La Cueva interesting. On a quiet Tuesday it reads as a Spanish tapas room with a band warming up in the corner; on a Champions League night it shifts into a proper sports bar, screens lit and the crowd shoulder to shoulder. RestaurantGuru logs more than 700 reviews, with the recurring praise landing on the live music and the festive room rather than any single dish, which tells you what to come for. The flip side is predictability: the kitchen is reliable rather than ambitious, and the volume is a feature, not a bug. Anyone after a refined plate or a quiet word should look elsewhere. For a group that wants football, a band and a table of small plates in one place, there is no closer match in Guéliz.
