The Cine Instan video club, on Viladomat street in Barcelona, has become the oldest in Spain that remains in operation after the recent closure of the Consolación Video Club in Utrera, Seville. The business opened in 1980 and today maintains an activity that combines movie rentals with a private cinema room and a cafeteria.
At the helm of the establishment is Aurora Depares, owner of a venue that preserves a catalog of more than 47,000 films and that has managed to adapt to the transformation of the audiovisual sector. The video club continues to offer title rentals with formulas such as a monthly flat rate of about 10 euros, which allows 250 members unlimited access to both new releases and the archive.
A business reconverted to remain open
The main source of income is no longer in traditional rental. Now it is sustained above all by a private cinema room with 30 seats that is rented for private screenings, premieres, events, and celebrations. To that offer is added the cafeteria, conceived as a neighborhood meeting space where the experience can be prolonged beyond movie viewing.
Depares remembers that in the first years the activity was very different.
"There were queues in the street to enter, to rent the new releases or return movies" - Aurora Depares, owner
That role of proximity also marked the stage of greatest splendor of video clubs in the 80s and 90s, when around these businesses, explains the owner, community was generated.
From the rise of the home format to the fall of the sector
The evolution of audiovisual consumption changed radically from 2008. First with other forms of access to cinema at home and then with the expansion of legal platforms. Depares thus summarizes that shift.
"Afterwards, the legal platforms also arrived, but by then everything was very destroyed, because people had gotten used to consuming cinema without leaving home" - Aurora Depares, owner
The impact was general throughout Spain. The sector's employers' association estimated around 7,000 video clubs existed in 2005. In the last decade, only a few hundred remained. In that context, Cine Instan has resisted until becoming the doyen of a business that for years seemed condemned to disappear.
A wide catalog and a loyal public
Among the most rented titles at Cine Instan, classics like Star Wars, E.T. or Mamma Mia! continue to appear. At the same time, the venue maintains what it defines as a living catalog, with new additions like One Battle After Another, identified as a winner at the 2026 Academy Awards.
The young clientele continues to be a minority. Depares attributes that absence, above all, to the lack of knowledge of this type of spaces.
"It's a matter of lack of knowledge" - Aurora Depares, owner
Facing digital consumption, the owner defends the added value of the in-person experience.
"The personalized treatment and the act of touching, looking, socializing and discovering a film in a video store is not comparable to scrolling on the sofa, alone, in front of a screen" - Aurora Depares, owner
The future, he maintains, involves reclaiming the cultural and social component of the video club and by keeping alive a way of watching cinema that, in his opinion, is still worthwhile in a neighborhood and in a city where direct contact with culture still has space.