MADRID – Even before Madrid’s biggest snowfall in half a century collapsed part of its roof this month, Manuela Reyes Flores and her family were without electricity and running water during the winter in their impoverished area on the outskirts of the capital. Spain begins.
So it was just another matter of misery for them and thousands of other residents of the neighborhood, Cañada Real, when the huge snowstorm covered Madrid in one and a half feet of snow two weeks ago. The capital region was paralyzed, and on Tuesday, Madrid was declared a disaster area.
“We’ve never had an easy life,” she said. Said Reyes Flores, who settled in Cañada Real two decades ago as part of his large Roma community. She and her family had to light fires to stay warm, cook food and bathe water to bathe.
“We had to build our own house, and we’re always done our best to fix things without spending money,” she said.
“But I can tell you that this place has now gone from disastrous to simply uninhabitable,” she adds as she places a bucket under a leak from the hole in her ceiling, caused by the weight of the fresh snow.
Cañada Real, home to about 8,000 people, is one of Europe’s largest poverty-stricken neighborhoods. While part of the area is littered with brick-and-mortar houses, at least half of the people live there under corrugated iron roofs and tarpaulins, which are also used instead of glass windows.
The neighborhood has been a political footballer for decades, with several layers of government and various municipalities responsible for the large piece of land. Amid the political footsteps, about 15 non-governmental organizations stepped in to help the defenseless in Cañada Real. The number of Spanish aid workers has also increased since the pandemic began, as travel restrictions prevented them from working outside Spain.
Olga San Martín, the co-founder of Olvidados, a small humanitarian aid organization, visited Bosnia in December to distribute winter clothes in refugee camps.
“I consider life in Cañada Real just as horrible as in Bosnia, except that it feels even more shocking and shameful, because we have allowed it to happen in the capital of Spain and within the European Union,” she said after hearing the blizzard damage.
In 2017, lawmakers agreed to demolish a section of Cañada Real and move thousands of residents to subsidized apartments in Madrid. But only 105 such apartments were made available.
In October, Naturgy, a utility industry, cut off electricity supply to most of Cañada Real, saying residents use its electricity intensively, unregulated and unsafe, even though the area has only four official customer accounts.
The power outage led to clashes between police and residents. The clashes escalated as police moved in, detaining a dozen people and destroying several marijuana plots.
In December, a group of United Nations experts called on the Spanish authorities to restore electricity, especially to protect the approximately 1,800 children living in the area.
“You can not punish an entire population for a few crimes,” said Javier Baeza, a priest who regularly visits Cañada Real to assist its residents. “The political handling of Cañada Real can only be called terrible.”
Madrid City Hall, which responded to email questions, described Cañada Real as a challenge rather than a failure, pointing out that the relocation plan has received a strong boost over the past year. ‘
It has also been noted that the problem of Cañada Real dates back decades.
“If the solution was easy, it would be solved, because during all this time, there were people among all governments who were really very worried about the situation there,” the city government said.
Cañada Real was once a road for farmers to cross Spain in search of fresh pasture for their sheep. But in the 1960s, Madrid’s industrial expansion persuaded families to convert the land into vegetable gardens and eventually live on it.
Over the years, as real estate developers took over other impoverished neighborhoods and accelerated evictions elsewhere in Madrid, the population of Cañada Real increased. From the 1990s onwards, migrants arrived in large numbers, especially from Morocco and Romania.
A local beacon is a church where drug dealers and users gather and smoke heroin, with a view to police officers patrolling the area. Police say they only intervene in an emergency if there is violence or someone is in a critical health situation.
Many residents are eagerly waiting for the keys to the promised subsidized apartments so they can move on. But some feel resentful about leaving, worried about having to pay rent and possible tensions with new neighbors.
“We all know each other here, but I really do not think that people living in any other part of Madrid would like to have a gypsy family next door,” said Miguel Maya, who collects and sells scrap metal, like many in the Roma community.
Instead of leaving, some residents want the authorities to invest in basic infrastructure and legalize their long-standing presence there.
Carmen Carbonell Escudero (68) lives with her husband in Cañada Real. Although they have no proof of ownership, she said the couple paid € 20,000, about $ 24,300, to buy their abandoned home from its previous resident.
“Of course I knew we were buying something illegal here, but how many people much richer than me now have a lovely house for which they never got a real permit?” Ms. Carbonell Escudero said. “If you wait long enough in Spain, what was illegal can become legal.”
Eugenio García-Calderón, an engineer who previously supplied solar energy to people in the Brazilian Amazon, said he came to Cañada Real after its power was cut. The influx of first aid was welcome, he said, but “nothing good can happen here until we have a sustainable model, something that makes people self-sufficient rather than dependent on outside help.”