O shopping que surgiu no meio do nada e criou uma era em Salvador

In the 1970s, the construction of Iguatemi Shopping Mall forever changed the geography of Salvador: by moving the city's commercial center northward, it reshaped urban life. Opened in 1975, the space—renamed Shopping da Bahia—became a meeting point and even a tourist attraction, welcoming caravans in the 1970s and 1980s. In this video, we tour the city's most traditional shopping mall to show, through historical archives and impressions, what led a mall to become an object of collective memory for generations. Who doesn't remember, for example, the old walkway that led to the mall, completely clogged with traffic? Along the way, we encounter symbols of the past, such as the shoeshine girl who still works in one of the mall's ground-floor corridors and a chapel that celebrates baptisms and weddings. And we discover little-known stories. The land where the mall was built, for example, was originally intended to be the site of Esporte Clube Bahia's stadium. Newton Rique and Alfredo Mathias, the mall's creators, had more success. Gradually, the shopping center became popular, boosting the growth of the surrounding area, and marking a turning point in Salvador's urban planning. This change also had its costs for the city's traditional dynamics: consumption shifted, and commercial areas like Baixa dos Sapateiros and Rua Chile lost their presence. Five decades later, new challenges arise. Reporting and writing: Fernanda Santana. Editing: Eduardo Bastos. Image research: Eduardo Bastos, Fernanda Santana, Graça Figueiredo, and Milton Cerqueira.