There are few places in Europe that concentrate as much authenticity, as much sign of identity as Madrid's Carrer de la Paz. It is not the only street in the capital with a notable presence of historic or emblematic shops, but perhaps the one that concentrates the most in a small and central space.
In just one hundred meters, the street of Teatre Albéniz treasures the workshop of master guitar makers José Ramírez, founded in 1882; The Attic of the Curtain; the Bohindra bookstore of esoteric books; Eleggua, santeria store and also esoteric products; access to a gallery from the past, the Pasaje de los Relojeros (Béla Bartók stayed here); the Amira haberdashery and the El Rincón de Pontejos haberdashery and warehouse (what has become of the haberdashery of other times?); the Casa de las Torrijas, a prodigious tavern founded in 1842...
More endearing shops on the way to Puerta del Sol: the Esteban Sanz sports bookshop, with half a century of history; the bullfighter tailor Justo Algaba; Santarr ufina, a Spanish company of religious articles since 1887... The religious bookstore Hernández and Tejidos La Maja, a legendary store whose only ornamental elements survive, are recent losses.
Because it still has so many charming shops, Madrid is a city that has a lot to lose. What would happen if its commercial fabric succumbed to the change of uses imposed by digitization and predatory tourism? This inherited wealth is a perfect complement to dynamic and innovative Madrid. But in view of global trends, the conditional may need to be changed to the future: what will happen to Madrid when the flagship stores fall like dominoes and their premises are filled with Bellingham shirts and carrot muffins?
Madrid has joined the tourist circus late. If until recently it could boast of attracting a visitor with a marked cultural profile, since the pandemic it is catching up led by rulers who advocate without complexities for the more, the better. It is already the absolute first urban destination – Barcelona leads by far the ranking of international tourists – and the residents are starting to pay the high cost of entering the league of Instagrammable cities and alcoholic safaris.
Incorporated a little earlier in big tourism, cities such as Lisbon and Porto are also seeing their commercial ecosystem razed. The equation is perverse and infallible. Every x thousands of low cost flights, one less restaurant. And then there is Barcelona, who play in another league. The Catalan capital has accumulated many years of advantage and, as a result, it already has much less to lose. Concentrations of identity shops like those in Madrid are a thing of the past here, as the orphans of Vinçon or those nostalgic for the old bookshops on Carrer de la Palla know well.
Without any more nostalgia than necessary – commercial renewal is the law of life and if not, see the example of New York – some noteworthy conclusions can be drawn from the Barcelona laboratory.
At the outset, it is necessary to promote emblematic shops with original proposals (the Route of Artistic Showcases in Barcelona is an example), but also try to condition commercial uses in very saturated neighborhoods, although this kind of measure will never be to the liking of 'an administration as neoliberal as Madrid's.
It is also interesting to confederate with cities that suffer from the same problem. In March of this year, Lisbon, Paris, Rome and the Catalan capital signed the Barcelona Declaration for the preservation and promotion of emblematic shops. The exchange of ideas usually helps.
From the public sphere, a policy that favors the preservation of old towns - and the continuity of their trade - is to invest in cultural or other facilities that generate economic activity. In this way, the residents of the rest of the city are forced to frequent the center and it is prevented from becoming a ghetto for the exclusive use of tourists.
But we cannot deceive ourselves. These measures alone will not be able to contain the death of shops with an identity or the exodus of residents if the administrations - especially the central government - do not combat the crazy housing spiral with bold policies and determination. Which is equivalent to saying that, now that you can, you should enjoy the usual shops as if there was no tomorrow. Because there is none.
