Mercado San Antón

This guide to Mercado San Antón in Madrid opens during the Spanish Civil War, when vendors kept the stalls open through the siege of the capital, and follows the market's postwar rebuild with the plain concrete Spain could afford at the time. It traces how the surrounding Chueca neighborhood slid into decline by the 1970s and 80s, and how that same neglect drew in Madrid's gay community, who transformed the area block by block. Listen for how that history connects to the market's own reconstruction decades later.