Arrecife's finest terrace over the ocean opens on Friday: Cala Lounge, a minute from San Ginés

Some cities make sense by day and some make sense after dark. Arrecife is the second kind: when the sun drops behind the low roofs and the Atlantic turns into a dark sheet, the town stops being a port and becomes a sitting room.

That is where Cala Lounge opens. A restaurant and a bar at once, on Plaza de las Palmas, a few metres from San Ginés, its terrace facing the ocean — in all likelihood the finest in Arrecife. Lights strung between the trees, tables laid outdoors, the Atlantic in front of you, unseen at night but heard, and that low steady murmur people make when they are enjoying themselves. The first night is Friday 16 October.

Inside it is something else again: a wall of glass onto the square, so that anyone sitting under cover misses nothing of what happens outside. The ocean on one side, the square on the other. Few places in Arrecife can claim both.

What they are offering fits in four words, no flourishes: Mediterranean cooking, tapas and cocktails, live music, good company. Which, when you strip it back, is the only thing anyone asks of an October evening: a table outside, something good in front of you, and someone playing quietly enough that you can still talk.

Arrecife has few terraces over the water, and fewer squares that stay lit late. Every time one reopens, the town gains an hour. It is not just a bar raising its shutter: it is a piece of the centre breathing again after dinner.

No opening time and no booking details have been given for the first night. Anyone who wants to be there already knows: Friday the 16th, Plaza de las Palmas, where the town faces the ocean.