The coliving sector disembarks in the heart of Malasaña. The company Sharing Co, specialized in this type of projects, started a few weeks ago the exterior works to transform an old residential building in San Vicente Ferrer street, where Rosa Chacel lived, into another one with rooms with shared spaces, to which it will add several tourist apartments.

The project, advanced by El Confidencial, foresees a total of two years of works and its start-up in the second quarter of the year 2025, according to the information offered by Sharing Co on its web page. The works, which during this month of February has focused on interior demolitions of the building, will transform its former ten apartments into 18 single rooms and bathroom, with common spaces such as kitchen, laundry, dining room or living room on its upper floors. And a fireplace next to a vertical garden in the block courtyard.

The heads of the company, Arco Galán and Jaime Bello, explained to El Confidencial that there will also be “cinema or projection rooms so that people can rent them and watch a movie”. The prices of the rooms, which will be between 15 and 18 square meters, will be around 950-1,000 euros per person per month.

In addition, the second floor will be transformed into five tourist apartments, which will be accessed through a separate entrance located at number 5 San Andrés Street. Prices will be between 100 and 130 euros per night. The promoters of the project affirm that they do not want to be “a tourism company”, assuring that they want to “promote company trips (…) that is why we do not make one-night stays, a decision with which we also make a natural selection of the client”.

The decision to open these five accommodations as Tourist Use Housing contrasts with the entrepreneurs’ own words in the interview in El Confidencial about the fate of the property: “The idea is to bring it back to life following the style of Malasaña, a neighborhood that has had very good times and very bad times, and to do it under the concept of community, but taking into account what the neighbors of the neighborhood do not want, which are tourist apartments”.

The historic pharmacy, together with the other two premises

In the same interview, the people in charge of Sharing Co explain their intentions with the centenary Juanse Pharmacy, a premises protected at heritage level, as are its historical tiles, now covered during the renovation works. Their intention is to “homogenize them as much as possible and try to achieve a synergy between the three so that they can be taken over by a single group”. In addition to the pharmacy, the building had two bars, the old egg store and another tiki-themed one.

Sharing Co bought San Vicente 32 a year and a half ago for €5 million. The death in 2017 of Gustavo Pérez, owner of the property, prompted his family to seek the complete sale of the building and was emptying the building of tenants, including those of the bars and the hotel business that tried to open in the former pharmacy, which ended in a dispute with cross complaints.

The coliving company says that before their offer came another one for this building of 1,122 square meters, which finally did not materialize. Then came their offer and on February 12 they presented the responsible statement to the Center Board to carry out interior works on the first and fourth floors.

Before, in September, they had submitted another one for facade rehabilitation works and “specific interior refurbishment of the second and third floors”, according to information consulted by Somos Malasaña in the municipal archives.