It's called Intempo and Benidorm almost has the one ready the tallest residential building in Spain . It has not yet officially opened its doors, but it seems that there is little left for this 198-meter, 47-storey giant to start operating its 256 floors with luxury hotel services.
Is he tallest skyscraper in Spain after the 4 towers of Madrid (it will also continue to be when Caleido arrives in September) and the building that procrastinates. Because time , that disproportionate colossus that emerges on the already urbanistically overcrowded horizon of Benidorm has been since 2006 , the year in which the plays , making us wait to see the result.
Even so, its 198 meters have been waving on the horizon for a long time. And the images of how it will be inside as well.
THE SOAP SOAP OF THE INTEMPO
First lived on its own foundations the brick crisis : in 2013 the works were paralyzed and it was abandoned for several years, like many of those disturbing buildings with a skeleton and armor but without life. According to the official version, "in stand-by”.
El Intempo, a real estate soap opera with a happy ending?
During that process of inactivity, they say, he was under the supervision of professionals and guarded at all times, until at the end of 2017 it was acquired by an investment firm.
Afterwards, he has had all the ingredients to become a real estate soap opera : in those years they came into play a bankruptcy , the Management Company for Assets from Bank Restructuring (SAREB) and the occasional unfounded rumour, which they truncated everything.
13 years later (forgive the superstitions) they resumed " modernization and upgrading works ” of this reinforced concrete titan , which reminds us so much of The iron Giant (The Iron Man), the book by Ted Hughes and subsequent 1999 feature film directed by Brad Bird, which despite being a box office failure, was the last great traditional animated film in history and is in the collective imagination of several generations.
metaphors aside, Intempo Sky Resort also looks like a alien giant that, by mistake, instead of in the sea (as in the case of the robot in the film) has fallen on Benidorm's Poniente Beach, 300 meters from the Mediterranean coast.
One of the houses in the Intempo building.
THE TALLEST HOUSES IN SPAIN
And I might as well be a leviathan , in the form of a 1990s art deco residential building, with two huge straight towers united and crowned by a golden diamond
It will be precisely there, in that glowing inverted cone and dazzles on sunny days, where the 32 most exclusive homes : They will be customizable, located between floors 38 and 45, and will have between 174 and 282 m2.
And how much will it cost to live in the highest floors in Spain? They don't tell us this, but it's the million dollar question. And never better said, because everything indicates that it will be from that figure.
What we do know is that the rest of the mortals will be able to choose one of the floors on lower floors: for example, in the 13th , where there is one of 95 m2 for €335,000*.
If we continue going down, on the eighth floor, we find an apartment that costs €281,000 * and has 75 m2. Or those data were the ones provided when their end of life was expected. works for July 2021, with 40% of the houses already reserved according to the project.
The tallest residential building in Spain and the second in Europe
Of course: the project, led by Uniq Residential , aims to be as inclusive as possible: away from home there will be no distinctions. All owners of the 256 dwellings , and only them, will have access to the 7,500 m2 of common areas, typical of a 5 star hotel.
Let's go there: an entrance lobby in the form of an atrium seven meters high, three pools (one of them 800 m2) or one children's area of 1,000 m2 and at the top, on the 46th floor and on the roof of the building, a spa (with jacuzzis, massage areas or saunas), a Gym and one cocktail bar , which will be the highest in Europe.
alert, instagramers : here the curious will not be able to enter. Because this new settler of that unprecedented city that is Benidorm runs the risk of becoming an amusement park for tourists or a first cousin of La Muralla Roja of the late Bofill.
And the community of owners knows it . That is why she will be the one who, exclusively, manage the possible rentals of the owners who buy here as a second home or as an investment.
Intempo Building Spa
for their stunning views , for the comforts and for the location, some see it as the his dream house, but for others it is a cement rudeness.
It is true that it has something of the brutalist architecture of Le Corbusier's social housing, which had its boom in the 50s , just when the Alicante municipality, now a mecca for skyscrapers, began to take shape as a tourist city.
El Intempo, its aesthetics and its history, even have a bit of that wanting and not being able, of that old-fashioned kitsch and of doubtful taste that in Benidorm it continues to work.
Views from the Intempo building
But, prejudices aside, and even if it is more than 15 years later, we are before him tallest residential building in our country and the second in Europe . Also the umpteenth symbol of everything and nothing at the same time. Is all that glitters gold?
*Plus VAT. Includes garage and storage room.