Among the imposing concrete blocks and the accentuated slopes of a treasure at the edge of being forgotten: its municipal market. In what was once the epicenter of local commerce and a hotbed of neighbors up and down, it has now emptied to the point that only three stops and a bar resist. In front of the charcarter, María Álvarez sits, he talks with a neighbor because hopefully there are five people 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 .
The abandonment of the Ciutat Meridiana market began 15 years ago, when it closed the upper floor and a supermarket was located there. The Charcutera veteran will retire next year and does not believe that no one is interested in settling at her stop when she is empty. The housing crisis and the lack of economic activity of which it is one of the most humble neighborhoods in the city has caused an exodus of young population that prefers to move to more central areas. Demographic dynamics also do not help recover this sector in 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 located at the foot of the Sierra de Collserola, is another illustrative case. Barcelona experienced a moment of market expansion during the 1970s. Francesc Leiva, Pescadero and Secretary General of the Federation of Municipal Markets (FEMM) explains.
Barcelona has 39 food and four non -food markets distributed in 40 buildings. All add up to just over 2,000 establishments. According to the Municipal Markets Institute (IMMB), in 2024 they received 72 million visitors and remain the best valued municipal service in the surveys with an 8 out of 10. But the reality is that the markets of the suburbs stand out for the aging of the population and the lack 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 figure 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 trade as salvation
The health emergency unleashed by the pandemic reinforced the need to accelerate the digitalization of municipal markets, and for this Barcelona launched the market digitalization plan through the creation of a municipal online purchase system, a marketplace. The Consistory, still in the hands of the former mayor Ada Colau, invested between 2020 and 2023 near, of which 2.7 have been destined to adapt infrastructure to digital trade. Currently there are only eight to remodel, and among the most ambitious projects is the reform of the market of L’As abaceria (Gràcia), Sant Andreu, Horta and Montserrat (Nou Barris). But the digital bet has limitations and has not yet been consolidated. According to Leiva, in cases such as fishmongers or butchers, municipal ordinances only allow them to sell fresh product.
Isaac Rodríguez, in charge of a canning establishment in the Montserrat market, considers that the City Council has focused fundamentally on the main commercial 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 perhaps the exception that breaks the norm in peripheral neighborhoods. The image of the elderly and old people who save the pronounced streets loaded with cloth carts is still very common. The proper functioning of the Carmel market, a few meters from, cannot be understood without the memory of its neighbors. When the disaster occurred, a thousand neighbors had to be evicted. The political and social crisis was such that the neighbors turned driving local trade in solidarity with the affected paradists.
Rosa Prun has been in charge of her pollería for 35 years, and when she retires, she will go to her younger brother. Despite being an effervescent market, Prun is aware that there is no generational relay in most establishments: “There are several stops that are about to close, and once they close, they do not usually open again.”
