In this week’s issue of the magazine, Nick Paumgarten writes about Spain’s economic collapse by way of the failure of the ambitious development project Residencial Francisco Hernando, in an area called El Quiñón, near the village of Seseña. The housing complex is now only partially occupied, and there remains a vast waste of abandoned cranes and construction material. Nearby, the state-of-the-art Ciudad Real Central Airport, which opened in 2009, sits idle.
Simon Norfolk’s photographs present the stark reality of Spain’s economic collapse, conveying the sense of uncertainty and foreboding that sheaths not only this particular housing complex but also Spain’s economic future. “Everyone wanted this boom and prosperity to go on forever,” Norfolk said. “Everyone wanted to get rich doing nothing.”
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The Residencial Francisco Hernando is now a ghost town. The complex is surrounded by weedy lots and a mountain of discarded tires.
The hundred-mile drive along the Costa del Sol, from Málaga to Tarifa, suggests a fireless apocalypse—abandoned housing estates and apartment blocks, golf-links Serengetis, and acres of asphalt going to seed.
When the Mayor of Seseña reviewed development plans for the Residencial Francisco Hernando, he could find no feasible arrangement for delivering water or electricity or any other services. He withheld construction permits, but the developer kept building anyway.
Seseña was intended as a working-class bedroom community for Spain’s capital.
For blocks at a time, the ground-level units—would-be storefronts—are cinder-blocked shut and spray-painted with the phone numbers of leasing agents.
The southern half of El Quiñón is empty. Wind rattles through the courtyards, and paved roads dead-end in fields. Some of the plots are fenced off, the barbed wire tilted inward, as if to keep people in, rather than out.
Each apartment block has a vast enclosed courtyard. When the project, less than half built, opened, in 2007, Francisco Hernando, threw a courtyard party for a few thousand guests. Caterers served fake caviar on Bimbo bread.
The Ciudad Real Central Airport, located in central Spain, opened in 2009 and closed just a few years later. It cost over a billion euros to build and was designed to serve millions of passengers annually.
This airport walkway was supposed to connect to a station for Spain’s AVE high-speed train. It was never finished.
The airport included the first private international terminal built in Spain.
Billboards surrounding the Residencial Francisco Hernando advertise homes for sixty-five thousand euros—a clearing price determined by banks desperate to monetize the inventory.
Hernando wanted the complex to pay homage to his family. Atop a large plinth in a traffic circle is a bronzed statue of his parents. on one edge of the development is a park, named for his wife, María Audena, with a fountain pool, and paths winding through saplings.
Photographs by Simon Norfolk/Institute.