The retirement and the exodus of younger folks put in test the municipal markets of the periphery of Barcelona | News from Catalonia | EUROtoday

Among the imposing concrete blocks and the accentuated slopes of Ciutat Meridiana, a treasure is hidden on the sting of being forgotten: its municipal market. In what was as soon as the epicenter of native commerce and a hotbed of neighbors up and down, it has now emptied to the purpose that solely three stops and a bar resist. In entrance of the charcarter, María Álvarez sits, he talks with a neighbor as a result of hopefully there are 5 individuals who roam the entrails of the market. “The young people in the neighborhood, when they have a little purchasing power, go to other areas because there is no job here. No one wants to devote themselves to this and we must renew ourselves to save our shops,” Álvarez laments. The hope of the sector is now going to wager on digitalization.

The abandonment of the Ciutat Meridiana market started 15 years in the past, when the Barcelona City Council closed the higher flooring and a grocery store was positioned there. The Charcutera veteran will retire subsequent 12 months and doesn’t imagine that nobody is fascinated about settling at her cease when she is empty. The housing disaster and the dearth of financial exercise of which it is without doubt one of the most humble neighborhoods within the metropolis has brought on an exodus of younger inhabitants that prefers to maneuver to extra central areas. Demographic dynamics additionally don’t assist recuperate this sector within the neighborhood. “A lot of foreign population is coming, which I do not criticize at all, what happens is that they create their own unions and do not come to buy here. It is evident that a Muslim person will not buy me the flesh, but that he will go to the butcher shop halal”Álvarez argues.

The Canyelles neighborhood market, a labor neighborhood positioned on the foot of the Sierra de Collserola, is one other illustrative case. Barcelona skilled a second of market growth through the Nineteen Seventies. Francesc Leiva, Pescadero and Secretary General of the Federation of Municipal Markets (FEMM) explains.

Barcelona has 39 meals and 4 non -food markets distributed in 40 buildings. All add as much as simply over 2,000 institutions. According to the Municipal Markets Institute (IMMB), in 2024 they obtained 72 million guests and stay the most effective valued municipal service within the surveys with an 8 out of 10. But the fact is that the markets of the suburbs stand out for the getting older of the inhabitants and the dearth of professionalization of the sector. “40 years ago the stops were very small, four or five square meters. We were many and very fought. This is now unsustainable and the City Council asks that the establishments are somewhat larger and that we open tomorrow and afternoon. We want to be competitive so that multinationals do not eat us,” says Leiva. “The problem that we have to work more and in larger stops is that we need more staff,” he says.

Leiva regrets that the apprentice determine has disappeared. “Initiatives for the formation of young people in the sector as the courses offered by Mercabarna for unemployed people are fine, but it is not the same as knowing the product at the same point of sale. Before you threw two or three years for the customer and then become in charge,” he says.

Online commerce as salvation

The well being emergency unleashed by the pandemic bolstered the necessity to speed up the digitalization of municipal markets, and for this Barcelona launched the market digitalization plan by means of the creation of a municipal on-line buy system, a market. The Consistory, nonetheless within the palms of the previous mayor Ada Colau, invested between 2020 and 2023 about 100 million euros for generalized reworking, of which 2.7 have been destined to adapt infrastructure to digital commerce. Currently there are solely eight to transform, and among the many most bold tasks is the reform of the market of L’As abaceria (Gràcia), Sant Andreu, Horta and Montserrat (Nou Barris). But the digital wager has limitations and has not but been consolidated. According to Leiva, in circumstances comparable to fishmongers or butchers, municipal ordinances solely permit them to promote recent product.

Isaac Rodríguez, in command of a canning institution within the Montserrat market, considers that the City Council has targeted basically on the principle business axes. “The digitalization of the markets cannot work without being accompanied by a revitalization of the surroundings, and everyone knows that in the periphery it has not been invested in the same way as in the center,” he says.

The exception of Carmel, a neighborhood overturned with its market

With 68 open stops, the Carmel market is maybe the exception that breaks the norm in peripheral neighborhoods. The picture of the aged and previous individuals who save the pronounced streets loaded with fabric carts remains to be quite common. The correct functioning of the Carmel market, a number of meters from the plot that sank within the 2005 socavon, can’t be understood with out the reminiscence of its neighbors. When the catastrophe occurred, a thousand neighbors needed to be evicted. The political and social disaster was such that the neighbors turned driving native commerce in solidarity with the affected paradists.

Rosa Prun has been in command of her pollería for 35 years, and when she retires, she’s going to go to her youthful brother. Despite being an effervescent market, Prun is conscious that there is no such thing as a generational relay in most institutions: “There are several stops that are about to close, and once they close, they do not usually open again.”