• RAQUEL VILLAÉCIJA

    Madrid

Wednesday, January 13, 2021 - 02:00

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In the few days of sales that she has been able to open, Rocío, who runs a fashion and decoration store in Madrid's Malasaña neighborhood,

has only sold gloves and socks.

Conchita, who has another sport fashion and wedding dresses on Serrano Street, will save this first part of the year thanks to the fact that she had 170 wedding dresses ordered from the past (weddings that were not held) and that she has to deliver.

"Talking about sales is a lot to say, because we started them just after Reyes and then Filomena and the cold wave arrived and we confined ourselves. Yesterday

my partner and I closed at seven o'clock and we left for beer because no one had entered for hours

", Rocío points out.

The storm Filomena has come to finish off a sector, that of commerce, which

already predicted the worst reductions in its history due to the confluence of adverse factors

: the new restrictions in many communities to stop this third wave of the pandemic, the polar cold and the recommendations of the authorities not to go out into the street.

The winter sales last year still passed without a pandemic

and in July the de-escalation had already been carried out, there were no confinements or restrictions or closures to trade.

Not that there was much tourism (key for the textile sector), but at least mobility was allowed.

Bad start

This January everything has been complicated.

The trade of some regions, such as Castilla y León, for example, has spliced ​​the restrictions of the second wave with those of the new and the same Catalonia.

"The problem is not so much the storm, which obviously does not help, but these new measures in the establishments, which also take place a week after the sales officially begin," they point out from Anged, an association that represents companies such as Ikea, Leroy Merlin or Carrefour, among many others.

The Balearic Islands, Extremadura, Catalonia and Castilla y León are the regions that have decreed new restrictions (closures depending on the area, each with a different criterion).

In total "they add up to about a third of the trade in Spain subject to closures. If at the start of the sales there is a storm and then you close 15 days, the impact is enormous," they regret from Anged.

The textile takes the cake, with a loss of turnover, they estimate, of around 2,000 million

euros in these weeks, which are the highest sales of the year for the sector, according to Eduardo Zamácola, from Acotex.

This sector already has losses of 40% in all of 2020. The weekend after Reyes is the one with the highest turnover, with around 25% of the total.

Textile

"Filomena joins the restrictions ...

The most perverse effect for textiles is the limitation of meetings to a maximum of six people, because if you don't go to see people, you don't dress up, you don't buy clothes ... We

splice a wave with others and we no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel, "says the president of Acotex, which groups the textile sector.

"You have to be very crazy to go on sales now,"

confesses Conchita, with a shop on Calle Serrano, Madrid.

"People are cold, they are lazy to try on clothes ... I have been able to open the store because I live nearby and I come walking, but other nearby stores are still closed," explains Rocío, who recognizes that the Madrid neighborhood where she has the store is still impassable, with the entrances to many stores with snow and ice and fallen trees, "that have not yet been collected".

He also explains that

there are many shops that have not been allowed to open because they have snow plates on the cornices,

due to the danger of collapse, so that there is no traffic on those streets.

"This is a total blockade. It's a shame, because at Christmas consumption had started something," he laments.

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