Almost 14 years They have passed since the South Bay cinemas closed in April 2007 after a decade and a half open to the public. Now they return from the hand of the Yelmo chain and its premium theaters, which this Tuesday will already screen the first films and which today has a simple preliminary opening ceremony planned.
If in 1992 the movie theaters were a benchmark for the leisure offer with which the brand-new San Fernando shopping center was presented in the Bay, now they also constitute one of the keys to the remodeling of the space that until 2019 occupied the stores of The English Court.
The launch of the new cinemas was, in fact, the first project that announced Castellana Properties, owner of the shopping complex for two years, to undertake the transformation of the veteran South Bay in which it is immersed.
And in San Fernando it means recovering a leisure bet that was present from the beginning of the shopping center, which worked for 15 years becoming one of the key spaces of the galleries, and that many islanders still have very present. During a good part of those years, they were also the only cinemas that were on the Island, so it is convenient to remember their history now that films are being shown again.
The Chinese cinemas, as they were called, were one of the great attractions of South bay when it opened its doors in the early 90’s. The rooms were inaugurated – with a symbolic cut from a piece of celluloid tape – the June 4, 1992. Last summer, with the Yelmo construction already underway, it was 28 years old. Soon, following the pull of the opening of the shopping center, they became a benchmark in the Bay, where – according to data from the time – they came to monopolize more than 40 percent of the spectators.
The Addams Family, Star Trek: That Unknown Country, My cousin vinny, Check the killer, Pink sauce and Blame it on the bellboy were the first films on the billboard of those disappeared movie theaters. Among the most watched films that were screened in their rooms during all those years are Titanic, The Phantom Menace and, curiously, Here comes Condemor, with Chiquito de la Calzada, were the main blockbusters in these cinemas late 90s, as reflected even in the chronicles of the date.
With six rooms of cinema equipped with the latest technologies of that time -such as the Dolby Digital System- and 1,298 seats (the largest theater had a capacity for 339 people), the cinemas of South Bay exceeded 560,000 viewers in its first year, a dynamic that was maintained in the following years.
Of course, its irruption ended with the only traditional cinemas that still remained on the Island – with notorious lawsuits in between – and closed the rooms of the Admiral, today converted into a Congress Center of municipal ownership, in the same year of 1992.
The beginning of the new century brought another totally different scenario, The March 14, 2003 the multiplexes of the San Fernando Plaza shopping center, initially managed by the Ábaco chain: nine cinemas equipped with the most modern technologies and a few meters from the center of the city stiff competition for South Bay.
The two would live together for a few years. But just before the outbreak of the economic crisis, the April 12, 2007, the cinemas in Bahía Sur closed down. Its space became occupied by the H&M stores, which precisely closed in South Bay in 2019, shortly before El Corte Inglés also left the complex and Castellana Properties got fully involved in the remodeling of almost 22,000 square meters of surface area of this shopping center.
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