Wealthy Latin Americans are turning this exclusive European neighborhood from ‘rich to richer’

By Pau Mosquera, CNN

Madrid (CNN) — Every major city worth its salt typically boasts its own luxury area: New York has Fifth Avenue, Paris has the Champs-Élysées and in Madrid an area known as the “Golden Mile” stands out.

“Golden Mile” is a network of streets located in the Spanish capital’s Salamanca district where some of the most exclusive clothing and jewelry brands in the world are concentrated. It is an environment that has attracted foreigners eager to invest in housing, and a large part of them come from Latin America.

“It’s like an open-air shopping mall,” Cristina Lanzarot, the director of the Salamanca Neighborhood Merchants Association in Madrid, with about a hundred premium stores in the area, told CNN. “If not the most special (shopping mall), it is one of the most special in the world.”

It’s not just the “Golden Mile” foreigners are flocking to. This trend extends to the six neighborhoods that make up the Salamanca district, making it noticeable when walking through its streets, where the elegant atmosphere enraptures pedestrians with its wide avenues and majestic buildings.

The real shock comes with the prices — not just the cost of an afternoon of shopping indulgences, but of housing, too. This district has the highest price per square meter in all of Madrid: more than $11,500, compared with a citywide average of $6,800, according to figures compiled by the Madrid City Council in February.

Those are figures that would scare off many Spanish buyers but are within the reach of foreign fortunes, which have taken on growing importance in the district over the past decade. So much so that they have helped drive what Tarek Mure, an adviser at the real estate firm Gilmar in Salamanca, describes as an “unusual” form of gentrification. He says, “it’s not gentrification from poor to rich, but from rich to richer.”

Foreign-born residents made up 18% of the district’s population in 2015; by 2025, they accounted for nearly 30%, according to city council data.

What stands out is that of the district’s 44,680 foreign residents, nearly half — 21,740 people — come from South American countries. “Now, instead of going to Miami, these fortunes are coming to Madrid,” Lanzarot says. Mexicans total 3,549 residents in the district, according to 2025 data from the Madrid City Council.

Lanzarot cites “the beauty of its neoclassical architecture” and “the language and the security there is, the possibility it gives you to walk around calmly” as some of the reasons that have caused the influx of foreign wealth.

What the new buyers in Madrid are like

To break into the real estate market in this Madrid district, buyers need deep pockets, and according to Mure, these Latin American arrivals come with exactly that.

In his telling, they are “enormous” and “impossible to match,” a point he illustrates with a recent sale of a 460-square-meter (4,950 square-feet) apartment on Plaza de la Independencia — home to the iconic Puerta de Alcalá — that sold for more than $18 million.

“We’re talking about $35,000 or $39,000 per square meter, for a house that is not even new and that they have bought as a second residence,” Mure details, adding that buyers are spending between $2.3 million and $4.6 million on average per property.

These wealthy buyers also tend to share a taste for certain features: exterior-facing homes, open kitchens and living areas, and large bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, since, as Mure notes, “they have an active social life, and they are always inviting people over.”

Displacing Spanish money

The influx of these new fortunes has ended up modifying the commercial ecosystem of the area. “Now many more luxury stores are opening, and an incredible number of very important international jewelers,” points out Lanzarot.

The shift has also changed the habits of people who lived in the district for years. “If you go looking for a beer in a nice place with good tapas, you won’t find that anymore — at least not in Recoletos,” Mure says. “Now it’s all designer restaurants where a beer can cost $18 and they don’t serve anything with it.”

As an example, Mure points out, there are former residents of the Salamanca district who have chosen to invest the money from the sale in chalets in the luxury development of La Moraleja, in the neighboring municipality of Alcobendas, or El Viso, a neighborhood in the Chamberí district.

But the trend also creates a spillover effect, as Mure points out, as property prices rise in the areas where displaced residents end up moving.

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