Teatro Circo Apolo in El Algar is owned by the Asociación de Vecinos de El Algar (Residents' Association), with administrative management by the Asociación del Teatro Circo Apolo de El Algar. Since October 2013, artistic management has been run by La Pecera, Actividades Culturales, owned by Cristina Roca Ballester.
Built by the "La Amistad" society and designed by Torre Pacheco architect Pedro Cerdán Martínez, Teatro Apolo opened on Friday 4 January 1907. It is a modernist work built at the height of the Sierra de Cartagena-La Unión mining boom.
After a long period of intense programming — zarzuelas, variety and circus shows, famous artists of the era, theatre, cinema, a dance hall — the theatre entered a period of decline in the late 1960s, ceasing activity entirely in the early 1970s.
In the 1980s, Narciso Fernández Albaladejo and Ángel Sánchez Álvarez, together with the Plataforma Socio Cultural Alborada, began an intense effort to preserve the building and prevent property speculation. Their work culminated in 1989 with the transfer of ownership of the Apolo to the El Algar Residents' Association, and the start of the process that would lead to its listing as a Site of Cultural Interest (BIC) in 1998, as a protected historic monument.
Between 1990 and 2010, the Association spent two decades on administrative work and restoration phases. The final, decisive phase of works began in 2007 and finished in December 2009. Teatro Circo Apolo reopened on 4 October 2011.
Today, Teatro Circo Apolo is a theatre with a cultural service mission, run through a mixed public-private management model geared towards cultural value and economic efficiency.
