REAL ESTATE - Irish property group Quinlan Private last week announced that it had led a group of unnamed investors in the acquisition of a Barcelona shopping centre from Deka, the German open-ended fund.

A spokesman for Quinlan would not disclose the exact cost of the acquisition but confirmed that it the investors had paid more than €300m for the shopping centre in Spain’s largest single property deal to date. The initial yield will be “above” 5%.

Diagonal Mar, Catalonia’s largest shopping centre and one of Spain’s largest, opened four years ago. It has 193 units comprising 87,000 square metres of retail space over three flours and five basement levels including 5,000 parking spaces.

Behind the investment were strong economic growth and increased consumer spending in the Spanish market, said Quinlan Private partner Thomas Dowd.