Madrid - Spain's top fashion show Cibeles Madrid Fashion Week was opening for the 48th time on Monday, featuring full-bodied models for the third year running.

The weight of the models continued to arouse interest, with some experts still criticizing them as too thin.

Models participating in the Madrid Fashion Week, formerly known as the Pasarela Cibeles, must have a body mass index - calculated on a height-weight ratio - of at least
18, the limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for a person to be considered healthy.

A model measuring 1.75 metres, for instance, must thus weigh at least 56 kilograms.

Only one of the 45 models was not allowed to participate for being too skinny, said nutritionist Susana Monereo, who weighed them.

The Madrid Fashion Week has helped to popularize fuller-bodied models on European catwalks.

Maria Manera of the Spanish Association of Dieticians and Nutritionists, however, said that even if the models at the Madrid and other fashion shows were healthy, most of them were still "extremely thin."

Fashion models did not reflect the typical body structure of the Spanish population, Manera pointed out.

The five-day Madrid Fashion Week will feature the collections of 52 designers, including 16 emerging ones.

Its enlarged installations at the Ifema fair building now have two catwalks instead of one. )dpa)