The small Navarro jewelry store remains on Castaños Street. A business founded in 1916 that today surrounds bars and terraces in a pedestrian axis full of tourists where little by little the clothing stores fell to give way to the push of the so-called afternoon, to the delight of hoteliers and the sorrow of the neighborhood.
Castaños, like the Rambla de Méndez Núñez, is one of those once commercial arteries of the traditional center of Alicante that, in recent decades, has been losing the personality that local businesses gave it to replicate the international model of fast food restaurants identical to the that one finds in the commercial areas of any other city; a process that has not finished.
The economic difficulties of the pandemic, the inflation that attacks the economy of the neighbors, together with the retirement without generational replacement of veteran shopkeepers and the increasingly abundant presence of tourists who occupy the extraordinary number of tourist apartments that have proliferated in recent years. years in the area, leads to the closure and change of activity of numerous businesses.
Among the most recent, furniture and decoration stores such as Caché, in Plaza de Luceros, which has given way to a Bombon Boss, or Nieves Martínez, in O’Donnell, replaced by a luggage store, a timely idea considering the large number of rolling suitcases that come and go on the rough pavement of the Alicante sidewalks.
Ortuño, an emblematic women’s clothing store on Gerona Street, has also closed, although in its case the baton has been taken over by an establishment from the same union, Silvia Navarro, on the street that acts as a commercial hub that links the old town with Ensanche. , where a food classic like La Granadina resists.
Not long ago, the cinema of the same name closed on nearby Navas Street, whose premises remain empty, and which has left Pascual Pérez’s Aana as the only theater that survives outside of the shopping centers, the last heir of the Ideal, Carlos III , Monumental, Astoria or Casablanca that were closing as this frenetic century progressed. Nearby, in Álvarez Sereix, a bookstore survives, Raíces. A jewel.
Specialization still allows us to maintain that stronghold of textiles, specialized above all in wedding and party dresses, which make up the streets Bazán, Bailén, Teatro or the aforementioned Gerona, with establishments such as Filant, Vittorio Cataldo, Hannibal Laguna, La Pepa, Mabel, Rosa Cantó or the aforementioned Silvia Navarro. The old idea of ??the union concentration that once gave its name to many streets continues to work.
But another worrying phenomenon for the sector is the difficulty of establishing new businesses. As Vicente Armengol, president of the Comerciantes por Alicante collective, explains, in areas as supposedly desirable as Pintor Cabrera and the streets adjacent to Avenida Maisonnave, the most commercial in the city, Inditex territory located between the two Corte Inglés in the city, the price of premises is so expensive that it is difficult to consolidate a new business.
As a consequence, classics struggle to stay open and there are many entrepreneurs who are forced to close the shutter just one or two years after closing, unless expectations are not met. Paying 1,800 or 2,000 euros per month for a small establishment requires immediate income or a pocketbook that not everyone can afford. There are places that in just a few years have seen a children’s bookstore, a sex shop, a beauty center pass by and long periods of closure between them.
Meanwhile, in the heat of new tourism that raises the price of rents and sows the urban landscape with foreign tourists whose presence in the Ensanche of Alicante was scarce until recently, numerous convenience stores have opened, those small supermarkets that sell a wide variety of everyday items, they are open late and on holidays, where travelers can stock up on drinks and food and find that nail clipper or comb that they forgot to include in their luggage. New times, new customs.
