Shopping: Gran Vía

Gran Vía is the busiest, most popular street in Madrid. It’s 1300m long and more than 100 years old, and it’s lined with some of the most sought-after retail shops in town – a true open-air shopping mall, drawing over 10 million people every year.

It has recently been revamped with more vegetation and innovative urban furniture, although the most important changes are in the circulation. The new Gran Vía has less cars and pollution and is more pedestrian friendly. New zebra crossings have been created and the pavements have been enlarged, so you will be able to enjoy more space for your shopping. Furthermore, in the section between Plaza España and Plaza Callao, an independent cycleway in an upward direction has been created.

Gran Vía branches out of Calle Alcalá to the east and runs all the way to Plaza de España, featuring three main sections as follows.

From Calle Alcalá to Red de San Luis

This is perhaps the most interesting section in the architectural sense. It also features a series of traditional shops, resisting the onslaught of retail chains and international brands: Loewe (Gran Vía, 8; bags and leather goods), Grassy (Gran Vía, 1; high-end watches and jewellery) and Sanz (Gran Vía, 7; jewellery), whose emeralds were worn by Queen Victoria Eugenia; or Aristocrazy, luxury jeweller’s created in 2010 by the Suárez family that aims to be affordable for all pockets.

These elegant boutiques will take you back in time to the days when Gran Vía was synonymous with refinement. The street, however, strives to keep up with the times and so makes room for popular brands like New Balance (Gran Vía, 15; sportswear) or Adidas (Gran Vía, 21; sportswear), just at Calle Montera, marking the end of the first section.

From Red de San Luis to Callao

Red de San Luis is the unofficial name given to the network of streets in the final stretch of Calle Montera, also spanning Calle Fuencarral and Calle Hortaleza as they cross Gran Vía. It marks the beginning of Gran Vía’s busiest section, where you’ll find big stores housed in movie theatres and old-style shopping arcades as elegant as their counterparts in Paris.

The Telefónica building (Gran Vïa, 28) – the old headquarters of the telecommunications giant – now houses a tech shop and a cultural centre. The most popular fashion retailers have their shops here too: Bershka, Stradivarius, Cortefiel, H&M (Gran Vía, 37; a historic building that used to house a movie theatre, Cine Avenida, and a legendary party hall, Pasapoga, where everyone from Nazi spies to film stars like Ava Gardner or Gary Cooper spent an evening or two), ZARA (Gran Vía, 34), Real Madrid Official Store (Gran Vía, 31), PRIMARK (Gran Vía, 32; with an amazing interior design). You can also visit the Swarovski luxury jewellery firm’s establishment (Serrano, 44) or the shoe shop, Geox (Gran Vía, 50).

Among so many international firms, it is worth stopping off at Number 29 to get lost on the staircases and corners of La Casa del Libro, a shop that has watched the 20th century go by and still has an extensive catalogue in which there is room for specialised academic manuals as well as bestselling novels.

Number 27 is home to Salsa Jeans, the store specialised in jeans, and the new flagship store of the perfume shop, Douglas. Furthermore, at Number 38 you can find the official Nike store with all of the brand’s latest collection.

Located at Gran Vía 18, this WOW Concept mega store has been designed as a multi-brand and multi-product commercial centre where articles from hundreds of Internet brands can be found, as well as traditional firms, and innovative leisure and catering. The consumer is offered a unique and differential shopping experience at a digital and physical level.

From Callao to Plaza de España

The Capitol building and its Schweppes neon sign mark the beginning of the third section of Gran Vía. It offers lots of gift shops where visitors can find the right souvenirs to take back home, along with more fashion retailers: United Colors of Benetton (Gran Vía, 41), Lacoste (Gran Vía, 51), Atlético de Madrid Official Store (Gran Vía, 47). If you want to stop off on your way to the shops, there is a Starbucks at Gran Vía 58 and another good option is to visit the Jardín Secreto by Salvador Bachiller, an authentic natural oasis in the heart of Madrid, where you can buy accessories like bags, purses and shoes, and you can have something to eat or drink in its cafeteria on the top floor.

It is worth mentioning that the largest Huawei store in Europe is at Number 48 on the Gran Vía. It offers the latest products from its catalogue, interactive experiences for all the family and state-of-the-art technology, as well as workshops, master classes and courses.