Carlos Guisasola Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, February 29, 2024-00:08

  • Operations The 'brain' that guards the tunnels (40), underground galleries (170 km), lights and even fountains in Madrid

"What a pitty.

Tomorrow [today] I will come to say goodbye.

"I hope the change is for the better."

In every corner of Méndez Álvaro's El Corte Inglés you can breathe the aroma of farewell and a certain melancholy.

Mourning from regular customers, like Carmen, 67, who has formed a special bond with some of the vendors.

«I have been coming here since this center was built.

"It is difficult to imagine this street without the building," she acknowledges, before embarking on her penultimate journey through corridors that accumulate more than three decades of intrahistories.

She is also nostalgic for the clerks who, with the new destination tied up, and between buyer and buyer, they are propping up cardboard boxes with merchandise.

"I would have preferred Castellana, but I got Goya," admits one of them.

Goodbyes and hugs take place, between almost bare shelves and sections, such as the television or furniture, that are semi-deserted.

Many of the products on display have been liquidated and others are still waiting their turn.

Hipercor's seafood counter is orphaned, as are some of its aisles.

Time is running out.

Because tonight, when the clock strikes 10:00 p.m. (something more to let out the last clientele), the emblematic shopping center next to the South Bus Station, which would be inaugurated five years later, will close forever.

And the more than 600 employees and hundreds of regular customers will pass by Retama Street and its surroundings starting this Friday as if something were missing in that enclave in the south of the capital, next to the edge of the M-30.

Joseph continues opening the door to one of the entrances to people as if seconds were not against him.

He arrived in Spain years ago from

Sierra Leone

and found here, in the heart of Méndez Álvaro, a small oasis with which he could put something in his mouth.

His jacket hangs on the wall and he, armed with his corduroy cap, helps customers enter and exit the building.

«I will try to find a place in Goya or Preciados, but it is not easy.

"There is a lot of poverty," he explains in fluent Spanish, without neglecting his work, as a man with a cane approaches the door.

A customer leaves the shopping center.Felipe Diaz from VivarMUNDO

There are still those who remember freshly those first days in which El Corte Inglés opened its doors.

Because his arrival to that wasteland, a breeding ground for drugs and crime in the cold decades of the 80s and 90s, meant a revolution.

Leaving work late at night was often a challenge.

You have to remember that, back then, everything was cash.

The chronicles of the time say that on October 7, 1992, Joaquín Leguina

, president of the Community of Madrid,

José María Álvarez del Manzano

, mayor of the city, and Isidoro Álvarez, president of El Corte,

traveled to that point in the capital .

English, as well as many other names from politics and business.

Read:

José María

Cuevas

(CEOE),

Fernando Fernández Tapias

(Independent Business Confederation of Madrid)... There were hundreds of guests at the launching of a ship that arrives in port tonight.

They invested

12,000 million pesetas

(just over 20 million euros) on a commercial area of ​​33,600 square meters, nine floors and 1,300 parking spaces.

Almost 1,000 people came to work there.

A plan on 12,000 square meters

«For us the important thing is the offices that will come.

Customers come from the shopping center, but there will be many more who may enter in the future with the next project," they acknowledge, rubbing their hands in a nearby bar.

Nor did the taxi drivers stationed at the Retama Street stop seem overly affected yesterday: "We'll see what happens.

There are still many companies in the area and there will be even more.

Panoramic of the Méndez Álvaro area.Felipe Diaz from VivarMUNDO

Because, despite the nostalgia for the commercial icon that is saying goodbye, there are many who wait for that tomorrow that is already looming around the corner.

On October 30, the transformation of a good part of that urban environment was approved in the plenary session of the City Council.

Of course, also the land that the building will leave behind (72% will become municipal property) when it is demolished.

According to the project, on that land there will be a green area of

​​8,500 square meters

, equipment for the neighborhood yet to be defined by the Municipal District Board and a parking lot for public use.

But many are waiting for the lucrative part of that global space of almost

12,000 square meters

.

A plot of

3,311 meters

where one or two office towers will be built, with a maximum height of 27 floors.

All of this will make up the Nuevo Sur Méndez Álvaro area.

Yesterday, people were still coming in and out of the mall garage.

With the Post Office, the laundry or the lottery facility dismantled weeks ago.

"What a pity," some parishioners repeated, while they took one last look at the surroundings, as if trying to rescue that snapshot that certifies that it was not a dream.

That once, before those futuristic towers landed, they were there.

Today they will have the last opportunity to say goodbye.