reopen

“That’s one and there’s another one. See that one over there? It was a bar. Now it has four rooms in it.” A neighbor speaks de Vallecas and what he points his finger to are street-level premises that once housed fruit shops, haberdasheries, drugstores, grocery stores, pharmacies or bank branches and have now mutated into homes. Some of them are home to families who have resigned themselves to going about their daily lives in spaces that, warn from a neighborhood association in the area, they are poorly ventilated. Others are dedicated to a business juicier: vacation rental. It is the umpteenth example of the tourism from Madrid. A neighborhood in transformation. The Puente de Vallecas district is changing. And in a way that does not convince a good part of its neighbors. Over the last few years, people who go about their daily lives there have found that premises that previously housed neighborhood businesses, such as fruit shops or bakeries, have lowered the blinds to reopen, converted into something very different. In what? Housing. Or (increasingly) tourist accommodation, spaces designed for millions of tourists who visit Madrid every year. The residents of Vallecas know this from the flow of tourists they see through the streets because it is not strange that the new tourist apartments located on ground floors operate 100% virtually: customers make their reservations through platforms such as Booking, pay and access through code opening systems or the padlock boxes that have become so popular in other destinations. “It is increasing”. The phenomenon is striking enough to have caught the attention of Europa Press, which recently visited the Puente de Vallecas for talks with its inhabitants and some neighborhood associations. The nuances change, but not the discourse: all the people interviewed by the agency agree that the spaces left free by the businesses that close in the area are ‘reborn’ converted into homes, either for families or (increasingly) for tourists. “It’s increasing,” Javier Moral recognizesfrom the Dona Carlota de Numancia Neighborhood Association. The emphasis is not only on this reconversion of spaces at street level, but on what it represents for the life of the neighborhood. Occupied by tourists… and families. In Moral’s opinion, new homes often do not meet “habitability conditions”, which leads him to be suspicious of the real effectiveness of habitability cells. Europa Press explains that within these converted premises you can find tourists who demand cheaper accommodation than those advertised in the heart of Madrid (without giving up being just a few minutes from Atocha station), but also families conditioned by the price escalation of the rent. The problem, Jorge Nacarino insistsfrom the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid, is that “many times” these apartments “do not meet sufficient requirements due to size or ventilation.” The trend is more important than it may seem at first glance because it does not just represent a change in use. By replacing hairdressers, shoe stores or pharmacies with tourist apartments, the neighborhood loses neighborhood “meeting points” and forces residents to travel further and further away to find basic services, such as supermarkets or a bank. The arrival of tourists low cost encourages the opening of new businesses, but above all they are self-service laundries or convenience stores. fast food. Far beyond Vallecas. The change in the use of commercial basements in neighborhoods such as Palomeras Bajas, Entrevías, San Diego or Nueva Numancia is striking, but Puente de Vallecas is not the only area that is seeing how tourism transforms its landscape. not long ago we told you how a company had transformed an old bank office into a public bathroom in the historic center of Madrid. The business ended up going bankrupt, but its objective was clear: to nourish itself avalanche of tourists who visit the city. Precisely to alleviate the effects of growing tourist pressure, the Reside Plan prevents transforming commercial basements into apartments for tourists in the historic center or converting premises into homes on the main tertiary roads. In the case of Puente de Vallecas, this shields certain areas. “Low quality”. Beyond Madrid, other cities that receive thousands of tourists every year, such as Malaga or Santiago, have noted similar changes. In the first, Malaga, the City Council prepared a report which warns that “tourist pressure can cause the expulsion of native and value-added businesses” that end up being “replaced by souvenir shops and other businesses oriented exclusively to tourists.” The report does not stop there and also warns of the creation of “illegal or low-quality accommodation.” In the Galician capital, another study has confirmed that if at the beginning of the 1990s the historic center housed some 645 businesses aimed at residents (grocery stores, clothing and furniture stores, kiosks, drugstores, pharmacies…) today there are only 202. What’s more, food stores as such have collapsed more than 70% during that period. It is not something exceptional. In other cities, such as Valencia, what they call “tourist cages”lodgings for visitors, gated and at street level. Images | Wikipedia and Daquella Manera (Flickr) Via | Europa Press In Xataka | Northern Spain has been complaining about mass tourism for years. Asturias has discovered the bitter consequences of losing it