The Brotherhood of the Shelter was born in 1615 with the aim of “helping the needy of Madrid”. It is one of the historical entities of the city that, however, has left aside in recent years two of the main tools of this work with the closure of the residence for needy elderly people on Pez Street (converted into hostel for tourists) and the end of the activity of the subsidized but modestly priced Purísima Concepción school (whose new use remains unknown). Both decisions, highly controversial both locally and in the environment that hosts them, coincided with the arrival at the presidency of the institution of Fernando Ramírez de Haro, husband of Esperanza Aguirre and current Count of Bornos.
Both spaces share an enviable location, in the area of Malasaña closest to Gran Vía. Properties of great value that can alleviate the difficult economic situation of the entity, according to the public audits of the Brotherhood of 2022 and 2023. Documents that must be shared by law. and that can be found at this link. In them, the organization that has Ramírez de Haro as its eldest brother reflects more than two million euros in losses in the last three accounting years alone.
The 2022 economic report details 270,938 euros in losses, and also includes those of 2021: almost 122,000 euros. But the situation worsened in 2023, with a negative balance of 1.7 million. The Brotherhood justifies this in the document itself by “the compensation of the teachers of the Purísima Concepción school for a total value of 1,276,703 euros”. The entity recognizes that “the normal operating result did not compensate for the deficit of the activities carried out by our Brotherhood of the Refuge”.
The shelter began in 2016, after four centuries of helping the most destitute, a radical change in its model. The entity ended its activity in the center on Pez Street, which at the time had 45 beds and 26 employees. The justification proposed at the time by those responsible for the eviction was to try to mitigate economic losses of 1.4 million euros, a situation that, eight years later, not only has not been reversed, but has worsened.
At that time, the Brotherhood closed its residence to maintain initiatives such as the affordable charter school where 300 students attended, the religious order said in a letter sent to residents in which they also detailed their accounts. But currently, it only maintains the soup kitchen in the building adjoining the church of San Antonio de los Alemanes and the distribution of food to the underprivileged.
Seven years after that first step backwards in the residence for elderly people in need, the Refuge closed in 2023 the educational center with 372 years of history despite the pressure of the families, their protests since at the end of 2022 Ramírez de Haro sent them a letter promising to extend the activity of the school until the summer of 2024. In this way, she sought to give more time to find alternatives to the hundreds of people affected, but she finally backtracked and the closure was sudden in a few months. The cessation of activity led to more than 40 layoffs a year ago. The students were transferred to other schools in the area, centers without the charitable mission that characterized the Purísima Concepción.
At the same time, the Brotherhood revealed its real plans for the old reception center: to become a tourist accommodation coinciding with the arrival of José Luis Martínez-Almeida to the city hall of the capital, since until the departure of Manuela Carmena de Cibeles, it will not produce any known movement. Ramírez de Haro attended the wedding of the city councilor in April, a wedding that he abandoned, telling the press that he had “drank a lot” while he was driving, accompanied by his wife, the former president of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre.
This newspaper attempted to contact the religious organization to verify whether the transfer of the guest residence to another company for its transformation into hostel (a hostel focused on international tourists) is trying to mitigate this data. Also to know the forecasts for 2024 once this operation is completed and the school closed. The Brotherhood has not yet responded to the questions posed, arguing that those responsible are outside Madrid.
Links to other controversial tourist accommodations
Temporary housing has a much higher profitability than traditional rentals. The Brotherhood transformed the center into a place dedicated to this model, signing a contract for the first time in 2020 with the company Asistencia y Ayuda Yadisema SL, to which it transferred the works and their subsequent exploitation for the next 20 years. Later, thanks to a special plan requested from Almeida’s team in which he proposed raising the hostel with which to bill more than three million euros per year. The council approved the project in 2022 with votes in favor of the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox. The PSOE and Más Madrid voted against following complaints about “the outsourcing and touristification of the center of Madrid.”
Once the work was completed, Pez’s tourism business opened its doors last August. It did so under the name of Adventure Hostel Gran Vía, with beds starting at 31 euros in rooms shared with up to 13 other people, it states on its website. Its business license, recently granted by the Madrid City Council and to which this newspaper has had access, allows for a capacity of up to 551 people in the building, which has an area of 2,600 square meters. A very different activity from the assistance provided to the 45 elderly people who lived in the old residence.
The company that requested the special plan to open the hostel and that currently manages the business is Asistencia y Ayuda Yadisema SL, a company created for this business, which in turn has another company, Jima Patrimonial de Hostales, as its sole partner. Ignacio Núñez Luque and Miguel Ángel Garrido appear as directors of both companies, which also control Hostalcarria Hostales, a company that manages a tourist business in the surroundings of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid.
Jima Patrimonial is behind another of the most controversial hotel companies in the center of Madrid: it is preparing to open a hotel in the former convent of Las Recambios on Hortaleza Street, currently owned by the UGT and which rented the property to its tourist exploitation. The property was briefly squatted in 2022 to denounce tourist speculation in the center of Madrid. Those responsible dishonored the union for participating in the process of transforming the city into a center of mass tourism, “adding to the neoliberal policies of consumerism.” The same policies to which the once altruistic Religious Brotherhood of the Refuge seems to have entrusted its future.
