The Local Police of Guardamar del Segura, with reinforcements from the Guardia Civil, plan to implement today, Sunday April 19th, the closure order of the El Fogón Sunday market, which has been held every week for more than thirty years adjacent to the road N-332, opposite the Santa Ana industrial estate.
This is the decision taken by the City Council after knowing the judicial resolution of the contentious-administrative section of the Court of First Instance of Elche that rejects the precautionary measures requested by the owner of the property, after several municipal attempts to close the facility since before the summer of 2025.
In this case, the Mayor José Luis Sáez (PSOE) has requested the cooperation of the Government Sub-delegation to impose the closure on the ground and will have a special deployment of the Civil Guard to enforce the municipal order.
The closure was attempted several successive Sundays in September and October 2025, but the seals were removed by the property owner since he recognised that the City Council was not authorised to act at that time, until the company applied for the preventive measures.
Avoid fights
“The market management said that they want to avoid any conflict after the injunction was dismissed.” For this reason in the last hours they have notified all the usual sellers that this Sunday the market will not be held and they will comply with the municipal ordinance. But they said they will continue their legal fight to re-open this popular market, because apart from the denial of the injunction to keep it open, the merits of the administrative appeal they filed against the closure order has not been determined. In their appeal, the owners stress the invalidity of the closure procedure, since it “resurrected” a closure file opened by the City Council more than 12 years earlier, in 2014, which was similarly unfinished, and which culminated in the closure order of July 2015.
The family that owns the El Fogón flea market of about 30,000 square metres, had already announced that they have no intention of closing until the court rules on their request for precautionary measures, before the legal challenge they presented against the municipal closure order. Since then they have been working every Sunday. But the court has rejected their plea now.
The closure is reasonably easy, since the security personnel simply have to block the entry from the road roundabout, located to the north of the plot, and from the road to the football pitch, to the north.
The companies “El Fogón” collected a thousand signatures of neighbours and users urging that the premises remain open until the courts resolve the contentious-administrative appeal filed by the owners to defend themselves from the municipal decree of closure.
A closure order Mayor José Luis Sáez said had been in place since last late summer remained in effect. Reports are being filed systematically every Sunday about the unauthorised gatherings since then, he stressed, although he added that “they didn’t want to escalate tensions” and did not ask for police assistance until the court ruled on the precautionary measures requested by the owners. It is time to correct this long-standing anomaly, as has been done with other concerns in the municipality, such as the Moncayo flea market and the unlawful camping on the Segura River,” he said.
It is one of the most popular market in the province. Besides fresh products such as fruits and vegetables, it is particularly renowned for its array of collectibles, second-hand items and antiques – a flea market-style attraction that pulls in enormous crowds, “sometimes from very far away,” according to the organisers, each Sunday morning. It directly employs about 15 individuals, and provides income for dozens of families that rely on weekly sales as their main occupation.
The site the market occupies is allocated for development. It is subject to an urban development plan included in the General Plan of Guardamar del Segura since the 2000s, the processing of which is already in an advanced state. The proposal provides for the construction of more than two thousand dwellings on an area of more than half a million square metres. The owners admit that they will not be able to continue working if this plan is executed, but add that they have received no information from the business that leads the urban development consortium — to which they belong — about the property redistribution.
They insist that although it is a private urban development group, the City Council has a duty to be transparent in all procedural processes and they consider that this is not the case. The mayor answers that when the idea will be ready to be discussed publicly, it will be available for consultation by all the citizens. The ZO 6 El Oliverón plan involves 2,365 dwellings on 580,000 square metres, with commercial spaces, and affects vast tracts of traditional farming.
The proprietors in their appeal say the restaurant on the property is licensed, as are the warehouses. The site on which the market is located is zoned for development, and, for this reason, the owners understand that carrying out a service activity such as the one they perform is compatible and legal. They also compare this case with others that occupy larger areas in other parts of the region and even within the municipality of Guardamar itself, as they are located on rural or even protected land — such as the Campo market — which has been granted precautionary measures by the court to remain open.
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