LAST STAND BEHIND THE COUNTER

A ten years portrait of the last workers of a local market.

La Elipa´s shooping gallery open its doors at early 70s. With more than one hundred shops, it became as the commercial heart of the neighbourhood.

In the last years, the financial crisis, the proliferation of supermarkets, new ways of consume, a lack of transfer between generations and the negation of a government’s investments to give them oxygen, undermine the existence of these traditional markets in our cities.

This projects starts in 2009, while some workers closed their shops, were retired or a few open a shop out in the main street, just a dozen stalls stand opening their shops that maintain and give life to this space for more than 14 hours a day, serving a loyal and scarce clientele.

Nowadays, 10 years later, only seven stalls survive in this market, 4 indoor (two greengrocers, a butchery and a poultry) and 3 shops outside (a pharmacy, a drugstore and a clothes store), attending the last bitter events: the appeal of final closure to the Supreme Court.