New times, new architecture

The slaughterhouse and livestock market of Arganzuela had always been an open‑ended project with scope for growth. Enclosed by a wall measuring 2,500 m, and covering a surface area of 165,415 m2, the project by Luis Bellido y González was structured around a set of pavilions used for different purposes and services: management and administration, livestock market, sanitary services, vehicle depots, stalls and even a rail service.

In the wake of the civil war, the site was approved for other purposes and the potato storage warehouse was built in 1940, later to be transformed into a glasshouse in 1992. From 1970, the facilities began to fall into disuse, leading, in the 1990s, to the first measures to afford some of them a new purpose. In 1983, architect Rafael Fernández-Rañada transformed the area of the old slaughterhouse used for management and administration, currently the headquarters of the Arganzuela municipal council, and better known as Casa del Reloj (Clock House). In 1987, the same architect undertook the project to refurbish the stable and calf market warehouse for use in socio-cultural activities.

From 1990 to 1996, the architect Antonio Fernández Alba transformed the former cattle stalls into the headquarters of Ballet Nacional de España and Compañía Nacional de Danza. In 1996, the slaughterhouse was definitively closed as such, and one year later the site was listed, in line with Spain’s general urban planning charter of 1997.

In 2003, the Madrid City Council decided to hand the site over for socio‑cultural purposes and, accordingly, it began the process to amend the existing special plan. On 26 September 2005, changes to the special intervention, architectural adaptation and urban-environmental control plan were approved, in respect of the former municipal slaughterhouse, with the purpose of increasing its cultural use to 75% of the total.