Already have a green light. Or amber, rather: the Madrid City Council has launched a competition for concessions for the largest open-air park in the capital, the Juan Carlos I Park Auditorium. They proposed a demanial formula, extendable to 35 years for five more. That is, although the site will be publicly owned and operated, it will be operated by a private operator. It was already tried in 2021 and it went nowhere. This time, the offer will expire on November 24.
Inaugurated in 1992 as a project by Antonio Fernández-Alba, the last concert in its history was Guns N’ Roses in 2006. It has since become a dilapidated ruin. Nine years ago, in November 2017, Ahora Madrid pressed the competition for his rehabilitation. But it wasn’t until June 2021 when the city council announced its feasibility study and commitment to renovating it. It was never fulfilled: during 2024 and 2025, until December of the same year, came the arrival of private initiative, when the Barajas government rejected the proposal to rehabilitate the PSOE and manage it with Madrid Destino.
What do they want in return? At the moment, on paper, the successful bidder must program at least 60% of cultural, sports or leisure activities for the general public. The remaining 40% will be for private events, such as conferences or fairs.
More: You’ll open an accessible restaurant space, and you’ll be able to create new buildings to match the activity. The document requires an acoustic report, but allows normal noise levels to exceed 30 days a year and the park to be open outside of its normal hours. Reference capacity (theoretical) 9,813 people.
Canon. 446,000 euros per year plus 2% for each year of operation, that’s the fee. According to the city council, the works will cost at least 15.7 million euros (they will be borne by the concessionaire). 35.9 million worth of facilities to be relocated. For comparison, a cultural heritage report published by Madridiario estimated the minimum investment for rehabilitation at 5.7 million.
A year of procedure. The culture area had already announced that the auditorium would be used again. According to the municipal resolution, two people presented the reform and exploitation initiative, as we said at the beginning of the article. The first of April 3, 2024 provided for 14.6 million investments (or 21.7 million with equipment).
The second, on July 2, 2025, offered less than 15.9 million. In the absence of bread, both were positively valued. In January 2026, the BOCM opened a 30-day period to receive options, and Somos Madrid said it had two other offers with undisclosed identities.
From zombies to “acceptable states”. Over the years, there have been reports of looting, unseated areas, stolen cables, graffiti and attacks on plant areas. Of the nearly 10,000 seats, “only one remains,” a report by ElEspañol documented. Initial project reports, from Almeida’s first year, speak of an acceptable state of preservation, where defects can be corrected and without significant structural damage. What are we left with? That depends on the exact diagnosis measured today, around November 2027.
Two locations. The city council maintains that Madrid lacks space for 5,000 to 10,000 people without noise problems for residents. In Tierno Galván Park, the only comparable one, neighbors have been complaining about the involvement of festivals for some time.
Borja Karavante, representative of urban planning, considers this exploitation movement to be good news. The idea of reclaiming unused space for nearly two decades seems like the smartest thing to do; The question of guarantee of rest and environment will be resolved. Y Más Madrid described private management as “absolutely unbearable”, realizing that control of cultural programming had been lost. However, the term “privatization” is a term that the City Council does not use or include in any category.
precedent This model has already been applied to Tierno Galván’s old IMAX, transferred to the multinational musical theater Stage Entertainment for 42 years, after the “strange” collapse of its central dome, a huge owner of shows with regular press where the cinema is currently renovated. That movie theater closed in 2014 due to debt, and the building sat vacant for years until it was rehabilitated.
What’s coming now? After Nov. 24, the City Council will evaluate the offers and make final concessions, a process for which there is no public calendar. It remains to be seen how much the fee will increase above the minimum and how the noise will settle with residents of Borjas district. The auditorium is aged (it hasn’t offered a show in 18 years) and the acoustics study. For comparison, some homes registered an average of around 75 decibels during free practice for the Formula 1 Grand Prix at Madring. Threshold is limited to 45.
Picture | Madrid City Council / Flickr
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