Madrid’s financial heart is preparing for a historic urban makeover. The City Council has presented the basic plan to completely remodel AZCA, an 89.3 million euro project that will transform this 1960s enclave into a 21st-century financial district: greener, more pedestrian-friendly, better connected, and, above all, much more livable for those who use it daily. A renovation that comes after an agreement between City Hall, businesses, residents, and shops, and which aims to forever change the image of the great concrete canyon between Nuevos Ministerios and Santiago Bernabéu.
The project will cover 132,895 square meters, of which82,755 will be publicly owned land and 50,140 will be privately owned land for public use. The maximum budget for the project amounts to 89.3 million euros, of which the City Council will contribute 55.6 million and the private sector 33.7 million, through co-financing. The official goal is to transform a fragmented space, with uneven terrain and accessibility issues, into a continuous, clear, safe, and attractive environment for both businesses and pedestrians.
Construction, which will be put out to bid following the drafting and supervision of the implementation plan, will begin in the first half of 2027, making this decade the period of major transformation for the financial district. This timeline aligns with the other transformations along the Castellana axis (Castellana Park, Madrid Nuevo Norte, the area around the Cinco Torres), which together will reshape the economic and urban landscape of the city’s northern sector.
A new public space: accessible, green, and featuring water
One of the key points of the project is the redesign of the entire system of walkways, sunken plazas, and varying levels that currently characterize AZCA. The plan seeks to bridge these level differences to achieve full accessibility, incorporating two new elevators and renovating sidewalks and pedestrian paths along the perimeter (Avenida del General Perón, Paseo de la Castellana, Joaquín Costa, and Orense), as well as “a central traffic ring and five pedestrian walkways.”
At the same time, the renovation is committed to expanding and enhancing green spaces—an area where the City Council has faced heavy criticism for the lack of trees in some projects, such as those in Sol. The City Council announced today that more than 1,000 trees of 40 different species will be planted . Water will be “essential,” in the mayor’s own words, although all we know is what can be gleaned from the renderings, which appear to depict a series of waterfalls.
From a “non-place” to the financial district’s central square
The City Council insists that the project not only aims to “rehabilitate” a degraded area but also to redefine AZCA’s role in the city. Conceived in the 1960s as Madrid’s major office complex, the area gradually became obsolete and, despite housing thousands of workers and residents, came to be associated with issues of insecurity, filth, and disconnection from its immediate surroundings. The comprehensive redevelopment aims to reverse that image.
The political origins of this major shift in AZCA lie in the agreement reached in 2024 between the City Council and the key stakeholders in the area: businesses, merchants, and residents. That pact made it possible to break the deadlock in a space where, for decades, there had been a succession of partial plans, private initiatives, and debates about the management of public areas without a comprehensive solution. José Luis Martínez-Almeida has described the redevelopment as a way to “repay a debt of gratitude” to those who have endured the deterioration of an area that, in his words, was “a landmark” and “a central element of the urban fabric” when it was built.
AZCA in the context of the “transformation of the Castellana”
The new AZCA cannot be understood in isolation, but rather as another piece of the transformation of the Castellana axis, which the City Council touts as the “backbone” of Madrid’s future. Projects such as the redevelopment of General Perón and the area around the Cinco Torres have already been completed in the surrounding area, and large-scale initiatives like Madrid Nuevo Norte and Parque Castellana are underway, which will redefine land use, connectivity, and density in the city’s north. At the same time, other plans—such as the Southern Strategy or Madrid Nuevo Sur—seek to balance this momentum with major investments in the southern and southeastern districts.
In this roadmap of changes, AZCA emerges as the bridge between the “classic” financial Madrid of the 1970s and 1980s and the new generation of business districts that combine state-of-the-art offices, housing, and leisure in more sustainable environments. The renovation of buildings such as the Serantes, improvements in energy efficiency, and the update of the complex’s corporate image complete a process that aims to reposition the area on the competitive European landscape of CBDs (central business districts).