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There are few places in Europe that concentrate so much authenticity, so much hallmark as Madrid’s Calle de la Paz. It is not the only street in the capital with a notable presence of historic or emblematic businesses, but perhaps it is the one that concentrates the most in a small, central space.

In just one hundred meters, Albéniz Theater Street houses the workshop of the master guitar makers José Ramírez, founded in 1882; The Curtain Attic; the Bohindra bookstore of esoteric books; Eleggua, Santeria store and also esoteric products; access to an old gallery, the Watchmakers’ Passage (Béla Bartók stayed here); the Amira haberdashery and the El Rincón de Pontejos haberdashery and warehouse (what happened to the haberdashery stores of yesteryear?); the Casa de las Torrijas, a prodigious tavern founded in 1842…

The capital risks following in the footsteps of Barcelona, ​​where tourism has devastated everything

More charming shops on the way to Puerta del Sol: the Esteban Sanz sports bookstore, with half a century of history; the Justo Algaba bullfighters tailor shop; Santarrufina, a Spanish religious articles company since 1887… The religious bookstore Hernández y Tejidos la Maja, a legendary store from which only ornamental elements survive, are recent casualties.

Because it still enjoys so many charming stores, Madrid is a city that has a lot to lose. What would become of it if its commercial fabric succumbed to the change in uses imposed by digitalization and predatory tourism? This inherited wealth is a perfect complement to the dynamic and innovative Madrid. But, in view of global trends, perhaps the conditional will have to be changed for the future: what will become of Madrid when the emblematic stores fall like dominoes and their stores are filled with Bellingham t-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 with the help of rulers who unapologetically advocate for the more, the better. It is already the first absolute urban destination – Barcelona leads the ranking of international tourists by far – and residents are beginning to pay the cost of entering the league of instagrammable cities and the shot safari.

Incorporated a little earlier into grand tourism, cities like Lisbon and Porto are also seeing their commercial ecosystem devastated. The equation is perverse and infallible. For every x thousand low cost flights, a house provides less food. And then there is Barcelona, ​​which plays in another league. The Catalan capital has been ahead for many years and, consequently, has much less to lose. Concentrations of identity-based businesses like those in Madrid are history here, as the orphans of Vinçon or those nostalgic for the second-hand bookstores on Palla Street know well.

Ideas emerge from the Barcelona laboratory to delay the death of stores with identity

Without more nostalgia than necessary – commercial renewal is the law of life and if not, ask New York – some notable conclusions can be drawn from the Barcelona laboratory.

To begin with, we must promote emblematic stores with original proposals (the Ruta dels Aparadors Artístics in Barcelona is an example), but also try to condition commercial uses in highly saturated neighborhoods, although this type of measure will never be to the liking of an administration. as neoliberal as Madrid.

It is also interesting to confederate with cities that suffer 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 businesses. The exchange of ideas often helps.

From the public sphere, a policy that favors the preservation of old towns – and the continuity of their commerce – is to invest in cultural or other types of facilities that generate economic activity. In this way, residents from the rest of the city are forced to go to the center and prevent its conversion into a ghetto for the exclusive use of tourists.

But don’t fool yourself. These measures alone will not be able to contain the mortality of stores with identity or the exodus of residents if the administrations – especially the central government – ​​do not combat the crazy spiral of housing with bold policies and determination. Which is to say that, now that you can, you should enjoy the usual stores as if there were no tomorrow. Because there isn’t.