After 41 years, rising rents force Valencia record shop to close

Today's essentials (3 key points)

• A high-speed Ouigo train got tangled in overhead power cables inside a tunnel near Aranjuez, causing delays of more than four hours on Valencia-Madrid rail services, Valencia Secreta reports.
• Valencia will see fog today, with temperatures ranging from 14 to 24 degrees Celsius and winds of up to 12 km/h, Open-Meteo forecasts.
• Valencian band La Fúmiga is closing out its career this weekend with two farewell concerts at Valencia's Roig Arena, drawing a combined crowd of 36,000 fans.

Today's essentials

After 41 years, rising rents force Valencia record shop to close. Discos Harmony, a fixture in Valencia's city centre since 1985, shut its doors after its lease ran out on 31 October 2026, with owner Víctor telling elDiario.es that rents have climbed faster than the shop's takings.

elDiario.es reports that Discos Harmony's closure caps a run the outlet describes as 47 years, though the shop only moved to its current address in 1985, a gap of 41 years the article doesn't fully explain. Either way, Víctor says the maths behind running an independent record store downtown no longer works once rent outpaces turnover.

Discos Harmony isn't an isolated case. A few streets away in Extramurs, vegetarian restaurant La Greta, open at Carrer de Pere Bonfill 7 for roughly twenty years, recently changed hands under rent pressure, per elDiario.es; listings checked in early November 2026 still show it trading under the same name at the same address, suggesting a change of ownership rather than a full closure. Nearby, vegan restaurant Ana Eva reportedly shut after French investment funds bought up buildings in the area. In the Barrio del Carmen, bakery Horno Lourdes, on Carrer dels Cavallers, is now looking for a new tenant for its premises.

The clearest example of what's driving landlords' decisions sits at Calle Turia 49-51, where French firm Hovre Turia SL bought two buildings and evicted tenants along with a nursery school to build an 80-room boutique hotel. Accounts of the toll differ: an earlier elDiario.es report from around the eviction, in 2021, put the number of displaced families at 16, while the article behind this piece gives 33; the two figures haven't been reconciled.

The squeeze isn't news to City Hall. Compromís proposed a cap on commercial rents in early September 2026 and accused the council of leaving 1.3 million euros in subsidies for struggling shops unspent, according to moncloa.com. Valenciaplaza.com, which covers the local business scene, quotes a trader saying there's simply 'nothing' available under 700 euros a month for a commercial unit in the centre.

What this means for you: if you're renting a storefront or planning to open a shop in central Valencia, budget well above 700 euros a month and expect competition from hotel and tourist-letting conversions for the same buildings. If you shop at independent places you like, in the Carmen, Extramurs or elsewhere, this is the moment to use them, since landlords here are visibly favouring hotels and chains over long-standing tenants.

What you need to know

• Towns affected : non communique a cette heure
• Roads closed or diverted : non communique a cette heure
• Official instructions : non communique a cette heure
• Air quality : non communique a cette heure
• Official numbers & channels : non communique a cette heure
• Last updated : non communique a cette heure

Situation ongoing: this article will be updated.

Weather today

Fog today in Valencia, highs of 24 degrees. Valencia will see fog today with temperatures between 14 and 24 degrees Celsius and winds of up to 12 km/h, according to Open-Meteo.

Transport & traffic

• Ouigo tunnel snag near Aranjuez delays Valencia-Madrid trains over 4 hours. A Ouigo high-speed train became entangled with the overhead power cables inside a tunnel near Aranjuez, blocking the line and causing delays of more than four hours on Valencia-Madrid services, according to Valencia Secreta. For anyone travelling between Valencia and the capital today, that means checking your train's status before heading to the station: a single blocked tunnel on this shared high-speed corridor can cascade into hours-long waits for services that have nothing to do with the original fault, since Aranjuez sits on the main line most Madrid-bound trains from Valencia use.

What's changing for you

• Tres Forques residents report month of power flickers, mostly at dawn. Posts on Reddit's r/valencia report that residents of the Tres Forques neighbourhood have had brief power flickers for about a month now, usually three in a row in the early hours. If you live in Tres Forques and have noticed clocks resetting or smart devices rebooting overnight, you're not imagining it: other residents are reporting the same pattern, and the practical move is to log the exact times it happens and report them to your electricity distributor so repeated outages get tracked rather than dismissed as one-offs.
• Cheapest fuel today in the Comunitat: 1.469 euros for 95, 1.669 for diesel. The cheapest unleaded 95 fuel in the Comunitat Valenciana today is 1.469 euros a litre and diesel is 1.669 euros, a difference that can save up to 19 euros on a full tank, according to Las Provincias. If you're filling up today, it's worth comparing stations rather than defaulting to the nearest one: Las Provincias' roundup shows the price gap between the cheapest and priciest stations in the region is wide enough that a short detour can pay for itself several times over on a single tank.

Local news to know

• Valencia Bonita rounds up November's fairs, fiestas and events. Valencia Bonita has published its guide to November 2026 in Valencia, covering fairs, food events, culture and traditions taking place across the month.
• elDiario.es opinion piece questions PP's handling of regional candidacy. An elDiario.es opinion column criticises the Partido Popular for weighing Pérez Llorca as a candidate while attacking Diana Morant's bid for the Generalitat, arguing the party values track record inconsistently.
• La Fúmiga bids farewell to 36,000 fans at Valencia's Roig Arena. Valencian band La Fúmiga, who started 13 years ago as a village charanga band, is saying goodbye this weekend with two farewell concerts at Valencia's Roig Arena in front of a combined 36,000 people, according to Valencia Secreta.
• Storm tanks to curb flooding named a priority in Dana's 'zona cero'. Valencia Plaza reports that storm water tanks aimed at reducing flood risk are among the priorities being discussed for the area hit hardest by the Dana floods, described as the 'zona cero'.

The Valencia curiosity

• The 15th-century Valencian knight said to be haunted by a ghost. According to Valencia Bonita, a 15th-century Valencian knight named Gaspar Marrades was said to be plagued by visitations from his dead rival, a story recorded in Rafael Solaz's book La Valencia del más allá.