Inside the 88-room Axel Hotel Madrid, a 19th-century palatial building in the city’s old literary quarter, the restaurant Las Chicas, Los Chicos y Los Maniquís evokes Spain’s 1970s-’80s countercultural movement, La Movida Madrileña, sparked by the 1975 death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. The restaurant, its name the title of a song defining this powerful and experiential artistic and sociocultural era, is meant to convey the liberating nature of that new Spanish identity.

Designed by Barcelona studio El Equipo Creativo, the trifecta of rooms—including a private dining space—have markedly different personalities influenced by their respective dominant color schemes: green, red, and pink. Back in the 19th century, it was common, says partner and creative director Natali Canas del Pozo, for homes to exhibit “strong colors and contrast,” and the restaurant is guided by this residential chromatic philosophy. Soft and fluffy textural walls “with a different seam pattern in each” accentuate these variances.

In the main banquette-lined dining room, pops of canary yellow, pink neon, and a glimmering red tile bar overlooking the open kitchen are muted by a black and white checkerboard floor. “Geometric patterns were common in the art and graphic world of the ’80s, and we wanted to bring them into the project,” says Canas del Pozo. There is a cheeky story behind the double rhombus in particular, she points out: It was a subtle symbol for adult movies.