Paris Arrives in Zaragoza! Grandes Almacenes El Águila, Temple of Consumption and Leisure

Abstract

At the beginning of the contemporary era, Europe witnessed the emergence of new commercial spaces, largely connected to the formation of the nineteenth-century city and to new everyday rituals and ways of socialising. Among those novel establishments, department stores were characterised by the interior layout of large spaces for the free arrangement of goods, the widespread use of shop windows and the introduction of technical innovations, rather than by their technological resolution and style. In Zaragoza, the Parisian model of department stores crystallised in Grandes Almacenes El Águila, the first to open in the city, in 1904. This article aims to outline the history of Grandes Almacenes El Águila —closely linked to the economic and industrial boom of the time— and to emphasise the importance of the establishment as a temple of consumption and leisure.