For a long time Carabanchel meant one thing
The prison, which closed in 1998 and was demolished in 2008, gave the district a name that the rest of the city wore as shorthand for somewhere you did not go unless you lived there. The artists arrived precisely because of that. High ceilings, low rents, industrial light, and a neighbourhood that had not yet learned to perform itself for visitors.
That was ten years ago
The situation has changed and has not changed. The district south of the Manzanares still feels like a working neighbourhood. The supermarkets are still supermarkets. There are now more private art spaces selling contemporary work in Carabanchel than in Doctor Fourquet, the street that defined Madrid's gallery scene for the previous decade, in the shadow of the Reina Sofía. Both things are true at once. That is the reason to go.
What follows is a Saturday route
It takes about four hours at an unhurried pace, covers the galleries that matter most in 2026, and ends with a vermut and a gilda in good company. The Metro stop you want is Urgel or Oporto, Line 5.
Start:
VETA by Fer Francés
Calle de Antoñita Jiménez, 39 - Carabanchel
VETA occupies two former industrial warehouses, one a former printing press, one a former kitchen factory, spread across 1,200 square metres. It is the largest contemporary art gallery in Madrid and the fact that it is in Carabanchel rather than the Salamanca district tells you everything about who Fer Francés is and what he thinks the city's art scene should look like.
The programme runs from established international names to young painters you have not heard of yet, which is a riskier balance than most commercial galleries attempt. The murals outside, including the enormous Santiago Ydáñez painting that covers the solar across the street, make the block a destination before you have even walked through the door.
Go in the morning on a Saturday. The space is large enough to move through at your own pace without feeling watched. If there is a show you do not connect with, the building itself is worth the walk.
Sabrina Amrani
Calle de Sallaberry, 52 Carabanchel
Sabrina Amrani has been running her gallery since 2011: the original space in Malasaña, then a second space in Carabanchel opened in 2019, a 600 square metre platform for exhibitions of institutional scale. The Carabanchel space is where she shows the work that cannot fit anywhere else in the city.
Amrani's programming focuses on voices from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, with a particular interest in practices that question dominant narratives in Western art. This is not a gallery with a polite international flavour, it has a specific position and it holds it show after show.
The current exhibition, Closer to the Sun by Alexandra Karakashian, runs until 25 April 2026. Karakashian works with used engine oil and salt on canvas. The results are monochromatic and demanding in the way that only very serious material work can be. The space is quiet enough that the distance between you and the work reduces to a few steps, and the industrial light of the nave does something specific to how the surfaces read.
Coffee stop: Holgura x Placeo
Calle de Belmonte de Tajo, 34 Carabanchel
A few streets from VETA, Holgura x Placeo serves filter coffee with precision and plant-based options without making a performance of either.
The room is small and calm in a way that the galleries are not. The chai bizcocho is the correct choice if it is on.
This is not a coffee bar that has noticed Carabanchel becoming a destination and positioned itself accordingly. It was here before that story started. That is the difference.
Mala Fama Estudios
Avenida de Pedro Diez, 25, door 1-right Carabanchel
Mala Fama is not a gallery in the standard sense. It is a collective of working artist studios, built around the practice of Carlos Aires, with spaces occupied by painters and photographers who produce work here rather than simply exhibit it. On open studio days the doors are left ajar. On regular days you can see the work through the windows if you know where to look.
The building on Avenida de Pedro Diez is worth understanding as a block: Nave Oporto occupies another floor in the same cluster of buildings, and several individual studios fill the remaining spaces. Santiago Ydáñez called it when VETA opened: "there are musicians here too, there are a lot of musicians working in Carabanchel."
The block is not a cultural institution. It is a place where people make things, and you can be nearby while they do.
Benveniste Contemporary
Calle de Nicolás Morales, 37 Carabanchel
Benveniste is a print publisher first and a gallery second, which means the technical standard of the work here is higher than almost anywhere else in Madrid. The obsession is paper: the physical residue of mark-making, the way an impression sits in a surface, the difference between a print and a reproduction. It is a narrow concern and they pursue it with complete seriousness.
Visit on a Friday afternoon. The studios in the building sometimes have doors open, and the printing presses visible on the upper floors make the context of the work legible in a way it isn't anywhere else.
End:
Merinas
Calle Alférez Juan Usera, 42 Carabanchel
Merinas was opened in 2022 by three actresses: Lisi Linder, Lorena López and Marta Belenguer, who live in the neighbourhood, in the premises of a colmado that had been there for decades before them. The name is a direct tribute to the Hermanos Merino who ran the original ultramarinos. That continuity matters. It is why the bar feels like a neighbourhood bar rather than a concept.
People come for the vermut and the gilda. The 97-year-old neighbour who comes every day for a glass of wine sits at the same bar as the gallery staff from VETA. That mixture, according to Linder, is exactly what they wanted and does not happen by accident.
The terrace, which they recovered from an overgrown solar next door, is the right place to end a Saturday afternoon in Carabanchel. The palmera overhead is real. The light in April is good. Order the ensaladilla.
How to get to Carabanchel
Metro Line 5 to Urgel or Oporto. Both are a five-minute walk from VETA. The route above is walkable end to end in under 30 minutes excluding gallery time. Do not take a taxi into the neighbourhood and then wonder why it doesn't feel like anywhere.
A note on the circuit
Círculo Carabanchel is the collective that unites the galleries of the district, currently includes fifteen spaces: Belmonte, Benveniste Contemporary, Estudio Carlos Garaicoa, Galería La Caja Negra, Garage Bonilla, Lapislázuli Gallery, Lariot Collective, La Gran, La oficina, Marquesa Gallery, Memoria, OB Contemporary, Sabrina Amrani, Tönnheim Gallery and VETA by Fer Francés.
The route above covers four of them. The others reward return visits on different Saturdays, once you know the neighbourhood well enough to move through it without a plan.
This piece was first written in February 2026 to coincide with the open studios season. We have kept it because the galleries are open year-round and the route works in any month. We update it when the programme changes.
Know a gallery or space in Carabanchel that belongs here? Reply to [email protected]. We read everything.
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Created by four friends who met claiming they live on the most beautiful street in Madrid, and realised they were living on the same street.
Curated for the curious observer in Madrid.
