THE bodies of four people have been recovered in the rubble of six-storey building that collapsed in central Madrid on Tuesday.
The former office building on Calle de las Hileras was being converted into a four-star hotel by developer Rehbilita.
The property belongs to Saudi-based fund RSR, a real estate investor specialising in high-end hotels and tourist apartments in Spain and Portugal.
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RSR bought it for €24.5 million in 2022 and its renovation, approved by municipal authorities in December 2024, was expected to last two years.
Mayor Jose Luis Almeida said: “It is with deep sadness that we can confirm that firefighters have recovered the bodies of the people who went missing after the collapse.”
“The papers were in order for the work and reforms were being executed according to the authorisation that was granted,” he added.
The victims have been identified as three men aged between 30 and 50 from Ecuador, Mali and Guinea-Conakry and employed at the site as construction workers.
There was also a 30-year-old woman, named in some media as Laura, who according to firefighter sources played an administrative role in the project.
Their remains were found early on Wednesday morning- nearly 15 hours after the collapse of the building’s interior structure that left its facade intact.
Three other construction workers were injured.
A search-and-rescue operation saw police and firefighters deploy drones and sniffer dogs.
A worker called Mikhail was pumping concrete into the building’s lower floors and was outside when the collapse occurred at around 1pm on Tuesday.
He said he saw a large cloud of dust and immediately sprinted away.
“I was the first to run, I didn’t care about anything else. I’ll save my life first and, if I can, save others later,” he told reporters.
According to Madrid’s online registry of buildings under construction the property was built in 1965.
It underwent two technical inspections in 2012 and 2022 and was classified as ‘unfavourable’ due to ‘the general condition of the facade, exterior, partition walls, roof, roof terraces and plumbing and sewage system’.
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