From the foot of Mount Naranco you can see the panoramic view of Oviedo dominated by a large extraterrestrial spider, encased there, with its legs flexed, as if ready to rise up at any moment and join our many daily apocalypses.
It is the Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos, an architectural project begun in 2003, on the site of the old Real Oviedo stadium, in an area, Buenavista, that is neither too central nor too peripheral.
A vestige of that era of prosperity and constructive euphoria in which any provincial capital yearned to have an emblematic building to boast about, if possible signed by a prestigious architect, preferably Santiago Calatrava.
The people of Oviedo nicknamed this mammoth building, which barely fits in the space it occupies, as the Centollo.
But beyond the jokes in the cider houses, it weighs on the unconscious of the city as a great urban failure, which was already born marked with original sin.
"There is nowhere to take it, it is excessive, it does not integrate into the landscape or the environment, it does not hold up from any point of view," says Alfonso Toribio, former dean of the city's Official College of Architects.
Some of its corners practically rub against the surrounding residential towers and there is no space to observe it from a certain perspective: it overwhelms, it overwhelms, it scares.
The venue was inaugurated in 2011 (a left-wing association protested the "covert inauguration" with a rally by Mariano Rajoy, then president of the PP), tainted by costs that quadrupled the initial budget: from 79 to 360 million of euros.
It housed the congress space, a shopping center, a hotel, the offices of the Principality of Asturias, a car park... but it never became profitable.
According to some, because it tried to seek the profitability of each part instead of an overall profitability.
Oviedo, governed then by the popular mayor (in all senses) Gabino de Lorenzo, wanted to take advantage of the congress business, but the congress business was never so lucrative, due to the economic crisis, nor was the shopping center business.
That without counting the judicial farce, difficult to unravel,
In fact, his adventures were colored from the beginning by the constant controversy and the trials of various gangs.
For example, the cover, which promised to be mobile, never moved due to execution errors.
During the works, in 2006, there was a dangerous collapse that injured three workers: in 2011, in a first trial, the architect, the construction company and a subcontractor were sentenced to pay 3.5 million euros.
A year later, Calatrava and the promoter company, Jovellanos XXI, a private initiative of the powerful families Cosmen (owner of the Alsa bus company) and Lago (constructor), got involved in a series of lawsuits and counterclaims.
The architect wanted his fees, the company claimed for defects, cost overruns and lack of direction in the work.
Both parties were convicted.
Other companies were also victims of the excess, such as the electrical installer Izepsa, which filed lawsuits against the developer for non-payment of some 7.5 million euros.
"It was all a waste, and they made us dust," says Aquilino Zapico, owner, who for this reason had to close the company.
In a final judicial move of this war of all against all, in 2018, the Oviedo City Council, owner of the land (and who did not want to participate in this report), was sentenced to pay 18 million from the public treasury to Jovellanos XXI.
One of the last milestones in this cursed story occurred in 2019 when the 40,000-square-meter shopping center closed its doors due to the failure of its activity and the flight of the large franchises that languished there (the last to resist, like the tribe of Asterix, it was an operating Burger King until 2021), without even a few cinemas to animate the roost.
Debt, bankruptcy and nobody interested in taking it back.
What to do with the Calatrava?
"The best thing would be for it to disappear from the city," says Toribio, "but once the investment is made, we will have to find a utility for the citizens."
"It is necessary to make the best use of this infrastructure, which is now mostly public," says José Manuel Ferreira, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce.
For now, the car park, the largest in Asturias, with 1,700 spaces, has been bought by Banco Santander with the intention of selling it.
The big problem is what to do with the space of the failed shopping center, three empty floors that no promoter seems to be interested in.
From the Chamber of Commerce they offer to manage the space as a fairground that participates in the congresses of the palace, as happened in the successful International Cheese Festival, which filled the place with cheeses (and 14,000 people) last November. .
“Fairs and congresses are the most attractive tourism for a city, and we believe that it could be alive 12 months a year”,
adds Ferrera.
A part of the space would be managed by a Swiss investment fund, the main creditor of the property, where there would be hotels, shops or offices.
In any case, after filling countless pages in the regional press and even more conversations for years, the Centollo remains there, modifying for the remains the modest skyline of Oviedo, dust from a time characterized by the hybris of Greek tragedies, where the brick bubbled, visionary megaprojects abounded and problems like the ones we are dealing with today seemed imagined by a science fiction author.
On the other hand, like the building itself.
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