The penultimate chance of Barcelona's cursed shopping center

BarcelonaJordi Giró, president of the Olympic Village Residents' Association, is often stopped on the street with the same question: what do we know about El Centre de la Vila? The future of this neighborhood shopping center—the main commercial hub in an area with little to offer—has been worrying residents for years, who have been counting the stores that close and never reopen. Now they are skeptical as the center faces its penultimate opportunity, with Mercasa—the public company that owns it—debating whether to reinvest in the facilities to try to give it a boost or put it up for auction.

Neither option excites the residents of the Olympic Village, who have long been calling for Barcelona City Council to purchase El Centro de la Vila. However, at the last Economic Commission meeting, the fourth deputy mayor, Jordi Valls, ruled out this option. Although she explained that Mercasa has "adjusted" the price it is asking to part with the facility, she said the investment that the purchase would entail to bring it up to date is "unaffordable" for the City Council. However, she left the door open to reopening the debate later depending on the steps Mercasa takes.

In 2021, the then mayor, Ada Colau, already committed to negotiating with the State the transfer of El Centro de la Villa, but Mercasa has always preferred the sale of an asset that was initially valued at €50 million. Over time, these demands have decreased, and the latest proposal was around €25 million. However, this amount would have to be added to the investment required to bring the center up to date, which the City Council estimates would double the cost of the transaction. These figures are well above the five million euros that Colau and ERC agreed to set aside in the 2023 budget to attempt to purchase El Centre de la Vila.

"After listening to Valls, we were very discouraged," explains Giró. He emphasizes that until now, residents have been quietly awaiting the City Council's actions, but assures them that they will not stand idly by if it ultimately gives up on purchasing El Centre de la Vila. "We are prepared: if they take a step back, we will continue to move forward and mobilize," he warns. From ERC, the group that brought the issue to the last Economy Committee, Councilor Jordi Coronas warns that if the facility goes up for auction, the city may find that "an investment fund buys it to do who knows what" and that commercial activity will not be preserved.

On the downside, however, there's still the possibility that Mercasa won't find buyers willing to pay the asking price at this private auction. This would open a new window of opportunity for the City Council to negotiate the purchase for a lower price than the approximately €25 million the public company is currently asking.

A space with symptoms of abandonment

While the future of El Centre de la Vila remains unresolved, a stroll through its facilities is enough to confirm the precariousness of its situation. The latest report released by Mercasa states that in 2023, 44 of the 84 stores in the center were occupied, but at first glance, this figure is much lower today. The empty stores with signs announcing that this space is available constitute the vast majority, only interspersed with a few businesses still struggling to survive, such as the supermarket, the lottery office, the sports outlet, the optician's, the pharmacy, and the hairdresser's.

The final blow to the center was the closure, in the summer of 2023, of the Yelmo Icària cinemas, the main driving force behind the space. The skeleton of its ticket office in the middle of the lower floor of the shopping center underlines the feeling of abandonment of the space. The neighbors, who a few months ago sent a three-page letter to the director of operations at Mercasa in Madrid denouncing the situation at the center, are denouncing the neglect with which El Centre de la Vila is managed. "We've had escalators out of order for almost a year," protests Giró, who criticizes the fact that the center is managed from Madrid without a manager in Barcelona.

In recent years, the closure of stores has coexisted with rumors and speculation about the center's future. The most recent, last year, spoke of a super gym with a pool that ultimately failed to materialize and was also not clear to the neighbors. "There's a municipal gym on the corner across the street, and what we need in the neighborhood is retail," argues Giró, who believes the space is perfectly recoverable if there is the will and it is managed efficiently.

The empty stores aren't the only headache facing a shopping center that seems cursed. How's it going? uncover the NOWThe parking management has also been disastrous and is still dragging on with ongoing litigation. This legal dispute adds even greater difficulties to the sale of El Centro de la Villa, which now faces its penultimate opportunity.