Thursday, March 28

The Madrid City Council gives the green light to a large supermarket in the largest food market in Madrid


Opening a supermarket in the same building that houses dozens of retail stores is always controversial. Many of the latter fear that the unequal competition of a large chain will end their business, but the installation of a large area on municipal markets is something that is becoming common in Madrid. And the next place where you can do it will be in the Mercado de Maravillas, the largest of its kind covered in capital and, according to your project, in all of Europe.

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The Madrid City Council announced a couple of months ago that it would carry out works on this impressive supply gallery, currently with more than 250 stalls and an area of ​​8,700 square metres. The reform would serve to create a new plant on top of the current shops, with a huge size, another 3,000 square meters. But he did not report what could be housed there.

It has been necessary to wait for the publication of the special plan for this plot to discover that one of the two possibilities that the City Council will allow is to open “a place with its own supermarket configuration” there, reads the text to which the newspaper Somos Tetuán, which is followed by a long technical explanation of the legal reasons that allow its installation. The other option is to dedicate this second floor to “the retail trade modality”, which is not developed in this planning.

The special plan, which is now in the period of public information and allegations, details the advantages that this newly created second floor will have, where there will be permission to install the supermarket: “With the inclusion of a new commercial area with shorter opening hours wider than that of the market itself, a more rational occupation of the space in the car park will be achieved”, it says in one of the sections. He also points out that the “add value” of an “obsolete area” will mean “an important economic injection to the entity that manages the market that will allow carrying out the refurbishment works of the existing facilities that are currently necessary”.



The special plan also highlights that the proposed solution will allow the “reactivation of commercial activity in the center, through the inclusion of a greater number of associates that will give continuity to existing activities and will make the long-term survival of the market more viable.”

The Madrid City Council explains that it did not include the word “supermarket” in the press release that it distributed to talk about the special plan because it was focused on telling its objectives, “which is to increase the building capacity and improve the market’s habitability conditions, as as demanded by the merchants’ association” and detailing the works, in addition to indicating their use, “provision of public services in the category of Food Supply”, sources from the Urban Development area explain to this newspaper.



“The way in which that new plant is used later will be decided by the market management, within the permitted use, which is explicitly mentioned, and in which several modalities enter, but which is not the responsibility of this plan,” they add. while remembering that the documentation has been public for a few days.

The management of the Mercado de Maravillas points out to Somos Tetuán that no decision has yet been made and that all options are being considered at this time. The first thing -clarifies its maximum responsible- is to approve the special plan and then the different possibilities that the extension allows will be studied.

The works will be paid with a year and a half of rent

The Mercado de Maravillas has been open in Tetouan for 80 years, since 1942, when the construction of the building that would house it, designed by the architect Pedro Muguruza, was completed. It currently occupies the number 122 of Bravo Murillo street and with this reform it prepares for the first time an important change in its physiognomy, which recovers some originally designed elements that were never built.

The planned works will cost about 1.2 million euros, according to approximate calculations by the Merchants’ Association of the Mercado de Maravillas, which will assume the cost of the operation. The calculations proposed in the economic-financial study that accompanies the plan indicate that with the new plant, up to €788,382.50 per year can be rented, so the investment could be recovered in just a year and a half. “The viability of the investment is assured”, he adds in the explanation of these figures.

The works will raise a new floor on top of the existing one, maintaining the façade but modifying the layout of the openings to provide light and ventilation. The volumetric arrangement will also be adapted to allow the building depth to go from 12 to 60 meters. Restructuring and interior refurbishment work will also be undertaken in the old building to improve accessibility, evacuation conditions and adapt it to fire regulations, among others. The actions will be completed with the increase in the mandatory minimum number of parking spaces, which will be increased by 30 spaces and 6 more for loading and unloading.



The reform of the Mercado de Maravillas was requested by the new management of the municipally owned center and approved by its merchants’ association. The deadlines for its reform are still unknown because they could vary with the current period of allegations, but the intention of the Madrid City Council is that the reform be definitively approved after the summer and that the works begin in the year 2023.



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