The order from the City of Madrid to close the Madrid nightclub Teatro Barceló has put the capital’s nightlife on a war footing. The Activities Agency, dependent on the Urban Planning Area, sanctioned the venue for twice exceeding the capacity allowed in 2023 – by around 600 people according to police sources. The cessation of activity of the factory, which the most nostalgic still remember as Pachá, will last for a whole year, in the event that the appeal presented to the court to try to avoid the closure is unsuccessful. For the moment, the closure of the Barceló Theater has put the city’s hoteliers in front of the City Council over the capacity limits that the municipal administration has maintained since the 1990s, despite the fact that, as tourist business owners report, the technicians are in favor of allowing more people to enter.
Same location, same dimensions, same number of exits, same evacuation plan, different permitted capacity. In Madrid, for almost 30 years, the number of people that a leisure venue or restaurant can accommodate has not only been determined by technical safety criteria, but also by the neighborhood in which the venue opens its doors. Hoteliers have doubled down on their campaign to end this disparity by taking advantage of the recent revision of zoning regulations by the José Luis Martínez Almeida city council, but neighborhood associations fear that an indiscriminate increase in capacity will worsen the serious noise problems that many neighborhoods suffer from.
The City Council’s decision was not welcomed by the capital’s nightlife operators, who oppose a situation that “attacks the dignity of professionals in the leisure sector and the tourist image” of the city, according to a spokesperson for Noche Madrid, the leisure and entertainment association of the Community of Madrid. “We denounce the arbitrariness of the ADA’s actions and the regularity which, without any type of objective criterion in calculating the capacity of premises in accordance with their safety conditions, imposes sanctions on public establishments in an irregular, arbitrary and disproportionate manner”, he adds.
The conflict between leisure entrepreneurs and the City Council over the issue of capacity goes back a long way. To understand what is happening we have to go back to 1997. Then, the City Council, led by the popular José María Álvarez del Manzano, implemented its General Urban Plan (PGOU), the same one that will lay the foundations for the urban development of the city until today. In this document, some tables have been established, the so-called urban typologies, which assign a basic capacity to four types of activities. The result was immediate: the first local profile, a certain type of bar, has a limit of 74 seats in Chamberí and, however, could obtain an exemption for 600 and more in the suburbs. “In Madrid, capacity is calculated from the map, not from the safety of the premises”, summarizes Vicente Pizcueta, spokesperson for Noche Madrid, one of the main associations of night-time hospitality entrepreneurs in the capital.
This exemption can be obtained in any area of the capital, with the exception of the four areas of Madrid protected from noise in the so-called ZPAEs or Special Noise Protection Zones. The waiver is a project that business owners submit on a case-by-case basis and is known as a Use Implementation Impact Study (ERIU).
ERIU is the way to adjust capacity to what safety criteria allow. Noche Madrid claims that the Municipality’s Activities Agency (ADA) refuses to process these increases in the Central District and Chamberí, two areas with ZPAE that are very profitable for the city’s recreational activities.
The ZPAE, designed to protect coexistence by reducing the acoustic impact, regulate timetables, soundproofing measures and other elements related to noise. These plans talk about lax capacity as a possible cause of hardship, but do not set specific numbers. Nor do they contain an explicit prohibition that prevents the processing of an ERIU or the review of a capacity for technical reasons, according to Hervé Bernal, a lawyer for the hoteliers.
It is important to distinguish two concepts that are often confused: administrative capacity and evacuation capacity. The first is the number that appears on your license and the second is a technical assessment, usually by the fire department, that calculates how many people can safely leave an area in the event of an emergency. Lawyer Bernal points out that many of the Municipality’s sanctions show a discrepancy, since fire brigade reports confirm evacuation capacities higher than those registered, which indicates that the limitation responds to an administrative decision, not to a lack of technical safety.
The clash between technical evacuation capacity and administrative capacity becomes evident in specific cases. The Cocó room, on Alcalá street, was sealed in June by the ADA after an inspection that counted 898 people in a room with a capacity of 520 people. The administration ordered the closure and opened a sanctions file. A dossier to which this newspaper had access includes a technical inspection which, applying the Technical Building Code, calculated an evacuation capacity of over 1,400 people for Cocó. The contradiction is evident, the Fire Brigade understands that the premises can safely accommodate many more people, but the Agency however denies the capacity adjustment by appealing to the ZPAE and maintains the lower administrative capacity.
The discrepancy between technical reports and administrative decisions has transformed many sanctions into complaints: the administration acts on the registered capacity and the facilities respond with reports from the Fire Brigade and administrative-contentious appeals which, on some occasions, temporarily suspend the closures. Legal nonsense.
The pattern repeats. Sala Cool, in Gran Vía, has reports in its dossier that estimate the evacuation capacity at 1,238 and 1,404 people respectively, despite being sanctioned for hosting 900.
José Manuel Calvo, architect and former councilor for urban planning of the mayor of Manuela Carmena, recognizes that hoteliers have been asking for more capacity since his time in the municipal government: “The 1997 plan has not been revised and, together with the ZPAE, has constrained Centro and Chamberí in particular, where historically more noise complaints have been recorded.” Calvo warns that the solution is not simple, since equalizing the capacity upwards would clash with the inhabitants of these neighborhoods, while cutting them on the outskirts would make hoteliers indignant. This limited an agreement to homogenize capacity in the Carmen era. That’s why today we are committed to a broader, more detailed rule that analyzes each location on a case-by-case basis, like the ERIU.
For hoteliers the consequence is this status quo It is twofold: a disadvantage at the center and a relative advantage at the periphery. In neighborhoods like Vallecas, where the ZPAE does not act with the same intensity, an establishment can obtain a more generous capacity, but in the Center even establishments with sufficient meters and exits face an administrative ceiling that is only changed if the administration agrees to process the ERIU.
Más Madrid and other groups proposed dialogue tables and institutional figures to coordinate the night following European models. Eduardo Rubiño, interim spokesperson of Más Madrid during Rita Maestre’s maternity leave, calls for transparency: “Nightlife in Madrid deserves broad, participatory and transparent work that guarantees safe leisure and coexistence measures.”
Jorge Nacarino, president of the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations (FRAVM) and spokesperson for the Puente de Vallecas association, recalls why the suburbs look to other priorities: “In our neighborhood the conflicts have come more from the noise outside the premises, from the failure to respect safety measures and from practices to avoid closures. So far we have given priority to the problems that we consider most serious, such as retail sales and insecurity.” Nacarino admits that the generous capacity attracts business, but also pressure on rents, which is why his association shares “the call for equal treatment to avoid an invasion”.
