The luxury school Brewster Madrid, located in the protected building that housed the former Hospitalillo de Chamberí on Eloy Gonzalo Street, acknowledged in a statement that the center has been operating since its opening in September 2023 without the corresponding operating permit.
“Last August, Brewster completed the required modifications and informed the local Executive of the end of the works in its facilities, requesting in turn the necessary operating permit to be able to start the 2024-2025 academic year. For its part, the Madrid City Council granted it the operating permit, so Brewster Madrid will continue developing its innovative educational program,” explains the entity in a statement released to the media.
The educational center thus boasts of the regularization of its situation, at the same time as it admits the irregular development of the activity during its first year of existence. The entity also indicates having searched the works on this protected space and catalogued as Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC), in which before its private transfer the Community of Madrid had invested more than three million public euros between the mandates of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Esperanza Aguirre and Isabel Díaz Ayuso: “During the summer months, the school carried out the improvements requested by the City Council to condition the facilities of the historic house of the Marqués de Salados and the old Institute and Homeopathic Hospital of San José. for this its students and employees can remain in the emblematic building during their training period”, states the letter.
The regularization comes as the school continues without suffering any consequences for the work undertaken and for starting its activity without having the appropriate authorizations. Official sources from Brewster Academy International itself confirmed to elDiario.es in August that the entity had not yet paid the 100,000 euro fine imposed for intervening in the property without the appropriate municipal authorization. In fact, the company is maneuvering to avoid it: “The fine is being appealed. It is now up to the designated judge to decide the matter.
The amount imposed by the government of José Luis Martínez-Almeida could be reduced to 60,000 euros if the offending entity acknowledged the sanction, but this has not been the case and Brewster has decided to appeal to the courts. The luxury school is seeking to gain time, but also to remove even the sanction imposed by the City Council. Everything will depend on the decision of the Contentious-Administrative Court of Madrid. Previously, the Municipal Activities Agency, dependent on the urban planning area, had imposed a “serious” infraction on the school because it operated with a private educational use that was “incompatible with the urban planning regulations in force.”
The school was open without a permit from the start of the last school year, in September 2023, until the end of November. The officials chose to reopen classes with the special plan necessary for its implementation still in progress: the municipal plenary assembly did not approve it until November 28, 2023, when there was even an order to close the premises.
Anger from the city council without material consequences
That same month, the President of Chamberí, Jaime González Taboada, reported in a plenary session of the County Council that the work carried out in this school center had not received the mandatory report from the Heritage Commission. A closing date was therefore set, which was finally set for December 11. The councilor justifies the delay “because there are many children and we have to find other schools for them.”
But Brewster managed to avoid a closure in extremis, also addressing the court on this occasion. His goal, finally achieved, was that city officials could not proceed with the paralysis of classes for lack of permits, once the special plan had already been approved.
The opposition accused the school of carrying out illegal works to adapt the old Hospitalillo de Chamberí to its new purpose before this special plan was approved. No sanctions were finally communicated on this point. Brewster intervened in a protected garden, cut down part of the trees to install a parking lot and radically renovated the interiors of this protected building and recognized BIC.
The fine came after the municipal PSOE alerted about these violations. “I am happy to see that the violations of urban planning are being sanctioned,” the socialist councilor in charge of denouncing them, Antonio Giraldo, told Somos Chamberí. “I regret that, in a sanction that they have described as serious, the lowest range of what is sanctionable is chosen, around 60,000-100,000 euros, when they can sanction up to 500,000 or 600,000 euros,” he explained about the amount set.
Giraldo also wondered “how many cases that we don’t know about are not punished and what other crimes are committed elsewhere.” He believes that “urban planning discipline in Madrid does not work very well” and that the Community of Madrid “should also punish for carrying out irregular works on a BIC, in such a symbolic building in Chamberí.”
From public investment to an elite private center
The former San José Homeopathic Institute and Hospital, where the Community of Madrid has invested more than three million euros in its rehabilitation, is now managed by Brewster Academy Spain SL. This company has installed a high-level school there, like other international centers of the Brewster brand. It is not for nothing that they are also considering landing in the luxurious neighborhood of La Moraleja (in the Madrid municipality of Alcobendas) and in Murcia. The annual registration fees range from 6,000 euros for students aged 3 to 4 years to 22,344 for the final year (between 17 and 18 years).
Despite the lack of a building permit and a special plan initiated, its promoters began looking for students at the beginning of the year. However, it was soon realized that the deadlines were very tight, since the BIC status of the building forced the major works to be postponed due to the need to approve the aforementioned special plan.
The preparation of the classrooms required some work that was carried out in spring and summer, as Somos Chamberí was able to confirm. Those responsible attributed the delays to the “paralysis of the administration”, although the processing of the special plan was particularly agile in their case, compared to other similar administrative delays in the same city.
The homeopathic building was built between 1873 and 1878 thanks to a large popular subscription from the inhabitants of the capital, led by the first Marquis of Núñez. A charitable hospital that saved a large number of patients when, at the end of the 19th century, epidemics of tuberculosis or cholera ravaged the population of Madrid. It continued its activity until the beginning of the Civil War in 1936 and its definitive closure took place in 1980. A bitter family and noble dispute ensued over its properties, in which justice ended up ruling in favor of María José Fernández Rodríguez, Marquise of Núñez, whose objective from the beginning was to transfer the property to obtain the highest profitability.
