In front of a supermarket in the Westfield Parquesur shopping center in Madrid, Ainhoa and her ten friends consider whether they are going to eat or play a game at the bowling alley.
At the other end, Alberto waits, with his eyes distracted on his cell phone, for his wife and his daughter to finish window shopping.
They've been there since five and it's seven in the afternoon.
“We came to shop at the supermarket and we stayed,” he explains.
Meanwhile, Evelyn Pérez and Bryan Restrepo, a young Colombian couple, stop to take a breather.
“We go up to four days a week,” they confess.
While in other countries such as the United States or China the phenomenon of shopping centers is in decline, in Spain it is resisting - and in what way.
In 2023, the influx of visitors increased by 7.8% compared to 2022, exceeding pre-pandemic figures, according to the consulting firm Savills.
Sales also increased by 8.5% in the same period.
Not even the rise of electronic commerce has subdued large stores.
“Shopping centers have managed to successfully combine online and physical strategies,” explains Laetitia Ferracci, general director of Klépierre Iberia.
Carlos Homet, director for Spain at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW), adds that “in-store collection gives these spaces the opportunity to attract customers, who then take the opportunity to make other purchases, go to the doctor or visit the dentist inside. from the same place.”
The Expósito family, one of the regulars around Westfield Parquesur, is an example of this: “We came to see some sneakers that we saw online and that, apparently, were only left in this place.”
There are even stores that were born as digital projects and are now beginning to open physical stores in these large spaces.
José Manuel Expósito with his son at the Westfield Parque Sur in Madrid on a Saturday afternoon.LEV
To fight digital purchases and emerge victorious, the sector has had to undertake substantial changes.
Experts agree that expanding areas for entertainment is one of the keys to continuing to attract visitors, although they add other elements.
On the one hand, the focus has been on establishing large clothing and technology chains, such as Primark, MediaMarkt or Fnac, and on the other, the commitment to convenience stores, both food and fashion, has been redoubled.
At seven in the afternoon at the Westfield Parquesur there is no room for a pin.
Waves of visitors cross from side to side the galleries of the shopping complex, one of the largest in Spain.
Ainhoa and her friends have decided to go to the bowling alley, which is also crowded.
“They are no longer just shopping spaces, but places in which to spend free time,” clarifies Eduardo Ceballos, president of the Spanish Association of Shopping Centers and Parks (AECC).
“Today they are almost attraction centers,” Homet points out.
In these spaces, which have been colonized by nail salons, hairdressers, aesthetic clinics, game rooms and betting houses, coworking spaces and areas for celebrating children's birthdays, not only products are no longer sold, but experiences are sold.
And restaurants stand out in that equation.
Luis Espadas, executive director of the Retail division at Savills, believes that catering has become a pillar that sustains the success of these venues.
In the URW centers they have grown by 50% to represent 15% of our spaces, Homet specifies.
The Puerta del Norte II shopping center in San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid) on a Saturday afternoonL.EV
The construction of new surfaces has continued to rise in Spain: in 2023, 190,000 square meters of space will be added, according to Savills.
The AECC reports that in the next two or three years, 40 projects are expected to open, with a surface area of around one million square meters.
Spain has 580 open parks and shopping centers.
Ezequiel Durán, sales director at Sensormatic, argues that modern centers need to be spacious, “which is why we are seeing the prevalence of commercial parks—open-air and with large green expanses—over more traditional closed sites.
Furthermore, it is no longer necessary to have many stores, but rather large surfaces that make an impact.”
And he adds: “Having a Primark, for example, ensures the success of a shopping center.”
La Vaguada shopping center in the north of Madrid on a Sunday afternoon.LEV
The locomotives
María José Alvarado, who runs a bakery inside La Vaguada, the first shopping center that opened in Madrid, agrees with this idea.
Since chains such as MediaMarkt, Primark and Ikea arrived, the complex has changed its face.
“You can see that more people are coming,” she acknowledges.
With nearly four decades standing, La Vaguada resists as a neighborhood shopping plaza,” comments a visitor.
Despite its success, the center has had to undergo a major renovation process, both of the building itself and its exterior areas, to adapt to new times.
It is not a new trend in the sector: “There is less development of new centers and more work destined for remodeling,” explains Espadas.
However, in the universe of the Spanish shopping mall, not all establishments have had the wind in their favor.
11 kilometers from La Vaguada stands Alcalá Norte, which was once the flagship of commerce in the area.
Now, about a third of the stores have posted “for rent” signs.
Conchi Fernández opened her shoe store when the building was inaugurated in 1999. “In all shopping centers there are locomotives that attract buyers, such as Inditex stores (Zara, Bershka, Pull&Bear), and here we never had one of these,” she laments. .
The Alcalá Norte shopping center on a Sunday morning.LEV
Since the end of the pandemic, this space, with three floors and 233 stores, has been under threat of closure on several occasions due to the low influx of buyers and the extensive expenses involved in maintaining business.
“What we have left now are regular customers, who have known us for years, because pedestrians don't usually visit us anymore,” Fernández perceives.
For Espadas, from Savills, the problem of some shopping centers in crisis is easily explained: “The main threat is paralysis;
not investing, not improving the experience,” he clarifies.
“Things have to happen in these spaces that invite the customer to stay,” she says.
Night falls and most of Parquesur's restaurants and fast food chains are packed with hungry consumers.
Ainhoa and her friends decide to eat out, grab their bags and leave the premises.
Of course, they don't rule out returning to the shopping center later to have an ice cream for dessert.
The Westfield Parquesur bowling alley in Madrid on a Saturday afternoon.LEV
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