The Aragonese capital has industrial vestiges that, fortunately, still persist in time despite being forgotten and abandoned. In the best of cases, old buildings that before they were markets, railway stations, factories or even a slaughterhouse they are still standing, converted into cultural facilities of the city.
This is the case of the Teatro del Mercado, built in 1928 and which originally was precisely a fish market. It was left unused in the 1950s and its spaces were converted into municipal warehouses. At the initiative of the Teatro de la Ribera company, and with the support of the then mayor Ramón Sainz de Varanda, the architect Daniel Olano undertook its transformation. The property had been designed by Miguel Ángel Navarro and thus this market became one of the most endearing and beloved settings in the city since its inauguration on April 23, 1983.
Another fish market, the one on Avenida de Navarra, today houses the Delicias civic center. The building was designed in 1957 by Marcelo Carqué Anyesa, replacing the old one in the Plaza de Santo Domingo. The creation of Mercazaragoza, in the 80s market would give way to new uses in the space that was equipped with a conference room, cinema and theater and the installation of the civic center of the Zaragoza neighborhood.
Another center, Salvador Allende, occupies the facilities of the old municipal slaughterhouse, a set of industrial pavilions designed by the architect Ricardo Magdalena for the Aragonese Exhibition of 1885-1886. The main part of the construction is a large open central courtyard, on the sides of which there are three pavilions with a basilica plan connected by porches, and two symmetrical buildings are located on the façade. A large iron gate with five entrances surrounds the enclosure. Among the services that it currently houses are the Las Fuentes Municipal Board, the coexistence center for the elderly, the Cantalobos toy library, the municipal social services center, the youth home and the Ricardo Magdalena public library.
Among many other recovered industrial spaces, the following stand out: chocolate factory (former Zorraquino factory), in the Arrabal neighborhood, where painters, photographers, dance companies, circus or theater have the necessary space for their creative work; Harinera ZGZ (Harinera de Morón), a creative space in the San José neighborhood dedicated to active participation and transformation of urban space through creativity, or North station, another civic center from the Aragonese capital that was the old Arrabal railway station, built between 1856 and 1861. It was for years the most important in the city and its activity promoted the creation of the Jesús neighborhood. Trains stopped passing through it in the 1970s, relegated as a freight terminal until its closure in the following decade.
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