MOVE Climbing Hytasa
Seville, Spain
Specs: MOVE Climbing, founded and owned by Juan García Chicano, Javier Gamero Dalí, Christian González Iriarte and Joaquín Bilbao Vera, originated as an idea held by Gamero Dalí and Juan García Chicano before the team assembled. According to González Iriarte, “[Gamero Dalí] and [Bilbao Vera] had been involved in several attempts to open a climbing gym in Seville for years,” and they were close to making a project happen before it was stopped by the pandemic. Then, in 2024, González Iriarte asked Bilbao Vera about the climbing gym idea, “because I found the project extremely interesting and wanted to be involved,” he said. “He introduced me to [Gamero Dalí] and also to [García Chicano], who had recently joined the idea,” González Iriarte added, which led to the creation of the MOVE founding team. The owners “came into the project through a shared passion for climbing, but with very different professional backgrounds and areas of expertise,” González Iriarte stated.
“Very quickly, we realized that the four of us worked extremely well as a team because each person brought something completely different to the project. [García Chicano] brought an enormous amount of climbing and routesetting knowledge, while the rest of us came with complementary backgrounds in business, management and other areas,” González Iriarte explained. The team found a structure that made the project financially viable and, “after several previous attempts, 2024 was the moment when it stopped being an idea and actually became MOVE Climbing,” González Iriarte said. A few months later, the team’s first gym—a mixed-discipline facility located in Mairena del Aljarafe, a municipality southwest of Seville—opened in October 2024.
The second MOVE gym opened on September 5th in Hytasa, an industrial region of Seville, even though originally the team had not planned to expand so soon after opening the first location. “The response to our first gym was much stronger than we expected, and Mairena allowed us to build the MOVE community, learn a huge amount about operating a climbing gym, and understand what our customers really value,” González Iriarte said. “But the real trigger for Hytasa was the building itself.” He added that, when the chance appeared, the team realized finding another suitable location within the city of Seville could take many years. “It was too good [of] an opportunity to ignore, even if it meant accelerating our expansion plans significantly. So, in a way, we jumped into the deep end,” he said.
The Hytasa location was constructed in a preexisting historic building in part of Seville’s former industrial complex, which was originally associated with the city’s textile and cotton industry. “It is close to 90 years old and is a protected building, so we are preserving important parts of its original architecture, including the façade and the original roof structure,” González Iriarte told CBJ. While looking for the second MOVE location, the operators sought out a building with sufficient “height [and] structural capacity, large uninterrupted spaces, the right circulation and enough volume to create very different climbing environments,” González Iriarte said. Checking all those boxes was “particularly difficult…inside the municipality of Seville itself,” he noted. “There are more industrial buildings with these characteristics in the metropolitan area, which is one of the reasons our first location opened in Mairena del Aljarafe,” he explained. So, finding an historic site in Seville that also accommodated their vision urged the team forward.
MOVE Hytasa features roped walls reaching 44 feet and includes both lead climbing and 27 auto belays on 700 square meters (7,500 square feet) of climbing wall surface. The gym also has 900 square meters (9,700 square feet) of bouldering surface, with a dedicated slab room, adjustable boards, a spray wall, campus training, hangboards, and strength and conditioning equipment. A significant part of the facility was dedicated to families as well as younger climbers, who can participate in MOVE Kids—the gym’s youth programming.
“There are many schools surrounding the facility, and we expect to have more than 300 children attending regular climbing classes, so that part of the project has been considered from the beginning rather than being added afterwards,” González Iriarte explained. “We want a strong climber training on steep routes, a family discovering climbing for the first time, and somebody who comes exclusively to boulder to all feel that Hytasa was designed for them…Our goal is for Hytasa to work equally well as somewhere to climb casually, somewhere to spend time socially, and as a complete training facility for serious climbers.”
Walls: Citywall
Flooring: Citywall
CRM Software: Nubapp
Website: www.moveclimbing.es/hytasa
Instagram: @MOVE.Climbing
In Their Words: “The biggest lesson for us has been not to simply make a larger version of your first gym. The second facility is an opportunity to question everything you learned from the first one: what worked, what did not, where operational problems appeared, how people actually moved through the building, and which spaces customers really used. We have changed many decisions in Hytasa because of things we learned operating Mairena. At the same time, I would say you have to remain flexible. In our case, we did not expect to expand this early at all. The right building appeared, and we had to decide whether we were willing to accelerate our plans.” – Christian González Iriarte, Co-Owner and Co-Founder of MOVE Climbing
