The trade and hospitality sectors are “essential” to Madrid’s economy and life, although they have challenges to address: “modernising, creating good jobs and promoting intergenerational change”, as the capital’s city council has acknowledged. That’s why I fired A comprehensive strategy to promote commercial activity and hospitality for the City of Madrid 2025-2027, With a value of 95.4 million euros. Through this plan, the City Council will provide individual advice to each establishment owner to discover their needs and avoid business closure; She will open an office where she will work to simplify paperwork, promote generational change through specific training, and continue to reduce taxes such as IBI or IAE. All this so that two sectors The mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, admitted that “the things necessary for Madrid” could be developed “from the point of view of financial competitiveness and from the organizational and bureaucratic levels”, because “A street without shops or bars is a dead street.”
In Madrid there More than 42,000 shops, the majority of which are small enterprises Which employs nearly 158,000 people, according to the latest data from Oxford Economics Provided by the Consistory. In addition, there are more than 20,000 food and beverage establishments and about 7,000 accommodation establishments. However, according to Ángel Asensio, president of the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, “60 stores are closed every day due to excessive regulation that causes loss of competitiveness and tax pressures.” In his opinion, this strategy is essential “to overcome all challenges and support our merchants and hoteliers.”
Specifically, one of the measures the project is considering is identifying through Study with artificial intelligence In all districts of the city, individually, “what are the risks, challenges and opportunities” for each company to advise later. Once the automatic system describes and classifies supply and demand in different sectors of activity, the results will be shared with regions to design precise interventions and thus avoid the closure of businesses.
the second “The main issue for the survival” of these institutions, according to the council member, is generational change. “There are a lot of people who do not know what job opportunities exist in this field, and that is why we will give them the necessary training and a map of what the professional opportunities are in both sectors,” he insists. In this sense, a pastry and bakery school was opened in Poeta Bonita, a generational class in butchery, and experimental training for trade assistants, promoted with the business organization Cocem. In addition, the College of Hospitality and Food and the School of Commerce are added. In addition, to encourage innovation among municipal market traders, personal mentoring will be offered.
Less bureaucracy and lower taxes
Among other challenges identified by the Chamber of Commerce and Business Confederation of Madrid (CEIM) are “increasingly demanding regulations and taxes that, in many cases, make the existence of these SMEs difficult,” according to Miguel Garrido, President of CEIM. For this reason, Almeida committed to “generating a better framework so that two essential sectors in Madrid” can develop “from the point of view of financial competitiveness and from both the regulatory and bureaucratic levels.” will be created A technical office to simplify paperwork and the tax reduction will continue. The City Council supports the Tax on Economic Activities (IAE) for companies that start up or expand their workforce of permanent workers. The real estate tax (IBI) for municipal markets and century-old institutions has also been reduced by 95%.
This strategy also seeks to establish the fashion and craft industries as “strategic tourism and economic hubs”, bringing together designers, industry, clothing professionals and textile artisans. In 2025, the City Council allocated more than 3.7 million euros to these sectors. With the approval of this new strategy, the budget reaches 95.4 million euros pledged by the municipal government to promote 25 projects Until 2027 it focused on municipal markets and small businesses, in the city’s leading commercial areas, in the fashion and handicraft sector, in hospitality, gastronomy and street trade. As Martínez Almeida explained, “40 million will be given to municipal markets either for a generational change or to make the necessary reforms to be able to compete with supermarkets, 15 million for trade and 16 million for hospitality.”
Mas Madrid spokesman Eduardo Robinho, who attended the strategy presentation, criticized the fact that it had not been discussed with opposition groups. “We are very afraid that this plan, which was drawn up with our backs to the groups, is just smoke and propaganda in the face of a problem that does not stop growing,” he says. Robinho estimates that there are currently 40,000 empty shops in the city and “last year alone, 7,000 businesses went missing in Madrid, victims of real estate speculation.” For this reason, he recalled one of the measures his group proposes to “not end the lives of our neighborhoods”: That the city council “purchase those symbolic buildings that are under threat.” To expand the park that will be made available to businesses that will continue to preserve the essence of the city.
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