El Corte Inglés de Portal de l’Àngel will close forever this Saturday

A closure that had been simmering and that today, finally, has been finally announced: the Corte Inglés de Portal de l’Àngel will close its doors this August 31.

Thus, the emblematic shopping street of Barcelona, one of the three most expensive in the state, will say goodbye to one of its stores, also, most emblematic, leaving empty a building, Can Jorba, which is one of the jewels of the area.

The Corte Inglés itself has confirmed it, informing that, from September, all its commercial offer will be concentrated in the Plaça Catalunya building, in a strategy that seeks to focus commercial activity in the most profitable spaces. This closure, in fact, joins other recent closures in Barcelona, such as the Meridiana outlet and the Francesc Macià outlet, now converted into office space.

Thus, the business group considers this move a “transfer” and “rearrangement” of the offer, and not a closure, which seeks to “facilitate consumer shopping”. With this change, the sporting goods will move from the Portal de l’Àngel building to the eighth floor of the Plaça Catalunya center, centralizing the entire commercial offer.

The building had already been in the doldrums for a few years, and, in fact, the fifth floor was already closed.The decision to close the Portal de l’Àngel store comes two years after the sale of the building to real estate manager Redevco and investment fund Ares Management in 2022. The new owners plan to allocate the first floors to commercial rentals and the upper floors to offices, ruling out the opening of a new chain store.

According to some media, the intention of the owners is to slightly convert the building, with the first floors being used for retail rentals and the upper floors for offices.

There remains to be seen, then, the future of Can Jorba, an imposing neoclassical building called Can Jorba which was the first commercial building in the country to have escalators installed, and which was occupied by El Corte Inglés in 1998.