Until recent times there were virtually no large shopping centres in the Murcia region, however, all that has changed with three large centres having now opened their doors.

The first was the giant development of Nueva Condomina, surrounding the new football stadium to the north of Murcia city. The Mandarache Centre in Cartagena, opened a couple of weeks ago and now a big development, Thader, has opened at Murcia. Shops are opening at another large commercial centre, the Parque Mediterraneo, at Cartagena, which will be completed soon.

From a standing start, the region has become a shopping hub for a large part of southern Spain. This was demonstrated over the days around a recent holiday when so many people decided to head for Murcia that massive traffic jams built up on the autovias. Frustrated shoppers and other road users found themselves stuck in jams for three to five hours. Subsequently, the regional and national governments have been blaming each other for not providing sufficient road access.

Vast areas of car parking are provided once shoppers actually arrive at the centres. At Thader there are 6,500 spaces of which 4,400 are at ground level. In addition to the main shopping centres, the large Ikea shop, also north of Murcia has been attracting a phenomenal amount of shoppers. In a single day some 20,000 people crammed in. The same number of people also visited the Mandarache Centre on the first Sunday that it was open – representing 10 percent of the entire population of Cartagena.

These big shopping centres are, of course, common elsewhere in Europe but their arrival in Murcia is causing quite a stir. Many large chains including supermarkets, fashion stores, handyman centres, department stores and food and beverage outlets are to be found there. Virtually every major brand is represented. Each centre has multi-screen cinema complexes showing first-run movies. The projects represent huge investments – Thader is said to have involved an investment of half a billion euros by it’s developer. In addition to the main developer costs of the centres, there is massive additional investment by shops and other outlets.

One worry is that traditional shops in city centres will lose out, particularly as parking becomes ever more difficult with the increased number of vehicles on the roads as the regional economy booms. In Cartagena the pedestrianisation of the Calle Carmen, an elegant shopping street in the centre of the city, has been fiercely opposed by local shop owners and businessmen. The big centres appear to be set to attract continued high levels of visitors, especially families with working parents and limited time to spare for shopping and leisure. The shops are also open all day with no siestas. Unless the access improves, however, it may be that on busy days amongst the best-selling items will be pills to cure the headaches caused by traffic jams.

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