Neo-liberal ideologies and the contested formation of Mercamadrid or the shifting visibilities of urban infrastructure

This article examines the contested formation of Spain’s largest wholesale food distribution centre, Mercamadrid, in relation to wider projects of neo-liberal restructuring in Madrid, Spain, during the second half of the twentieth century. It first links the installations at Mercamadrid to efforts undertaken by the Franco Regime (1939–75) to liberalize the nation’s fledgling economy. To draw out some of the path-dependent legacies of Francoist urbanism, the article then explores a supply-chain dispute that unfolded at the wholesale complex during the Transition (1975–82) and early democratic periods (1982–96). A close reading of the so-called Fruit Sellers’ War of 1986 will show how urban elites symbolically framed Mercamadrid’s urban landscape as a bastion of consumer rights. The focus thereafter moves to the Arganzuela district, where prior to Mercamadrid’s construction the city’s original trio of municipal markets were previously located. This to show that a series of large-scale urban development projects there – the Atocha train station, the Matadero Madrid arts and cultural centre, and the Madrid Río Park – transformed the once-polluted industrial and service district into an iconic landscape of a burgeoning global city. The shifting narratives surrounding the purpose and function of Mercamadrid provide insights into the powerful ways that capital shapes the geographies of our cities to legitimize its own self-serving growth ideologies.