Your home has been sold to a vulture fund who suddenly wants you out. What would you do? This uplifting film follows the tenants of Tribulete 7 as they come together to fight back in ways never seen before in Madrid and, in the process, win the support of the entire neighbourhood of Lavapiés.
The day Michel* turned 18, he stopped being welcome in France where he’d been living for two years learning to be a plumber. Overnight, his rights changed. No longer a minor, he was told to leave the country.
Next Sunday, 9 June, is the EU elections. But why do they matter and how will they affect us on a local, regional, national and international level?
On Good Friday morning in Lavapiés, two young black men were filmed by a passerby being violently forced to the ground by police officers. One officer placed a man in a chokehold position while another officer beat his lower back until he was flat on the ground.
Spain, as per EU regulation, allows imports of the very foods it prohibits Spanish farmers from producing. Unable to compete with 'one rule for us, another rule for them' style deregulation, farmers are therefore forced to sell their produce at a fraction of their costs, and subsidies aren't enough to keep farms going.
Pan Bendito is a small pentagonal barrio in east Carabanchel, 6km from Sol. The name originates from the wheat fields on which it was built in 1963 to accommodate rural Spanish migrants who had arrived during Madrid’s industrial boom in the decades before. They’d previously been living in one of Madrid’s 30,000 shantytowns and vertical slums.
Author and photos: Leah Pattem I’ve seen very little on the news about progress in the flood-hit areas of Valencia, so I was curious to head back there to report on this myself. The clean-up operations by volunteers and public services have been incredible. At first glance, life appears to have resumed to relative normality but Paiporta so quiet. The town has been working hard to recover in time for the traditional barrio Fallas celebrations. The mud has mostly been cleared, and facades have been repainted, but traces of the flood remain: brown dust still stains the cracks in the pavement, and the record-high water mark is visible on abandoned buildings. Shiny, brand-new cars – mostly white – line every street. Windows and doors in both residential buildings and garages have been replaced, but around half of the town’s businesses seem to have shut down for good, including Bar Sandra....
On Friday, I visited Paiporta, one of the worst-affected towns in Valencia . From La Rambleta, I walked around 45 minutes to arrive to the focus point of the flood damage. En route, I pass a school where kids are handing out gloves, hand sanitiser and masks and are wishing volunteers all the best.
As rescue and recovery operations in Valencia’s flood-hit towns and barrios are underway, Madrid residents are donating food, hygiene products and clothes to municipal collection points run by mostly volunteers.
A DANA (a mass of high-altitude cold air mixes with warm humid air from the Mediterranean) hit Spain yesterday, affecting Madrid and Toledo the worst. Emergency services responded to around 1,500 incidents of people trapped in their cars and homes, which left two people dead and two more missing.
Urban Heat Snapshot (UHS), a research project by Arup university, studied and compared the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) of six major cities: Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mumbai and New York. Results revealed that out of all six cities, Madrid’s UHIE was the most extreme.
On Monday, less than 24 hours after the election in which we saw the right lose nationally, the same right-wing-run city council began preparations for works on Calle Áncora to expand Madrid’s metro network. These works come at the sacrifice of over 1000 mature trees, which residents are strongly resisting.
Author and photos: Leah Pattem An abandoned winery the size of a football stadium stands on the coast of Valencia in the northern area of Alboraia. Built in 1969 during the region’s industrial heyday, this redbrick complex once held up to 32 million litres of wine. It was among the first Spanish wineries to export abroad and, at its peak, a quarter of all wine leaving Spain passed through here. Locally known as the ‘Kremlin’, the winery has been disused since 2008, when production moved to Chiva. In years since, it’s become a magnet for urban explorers. In 2022, the council briefly opened it for heritage tours but, beyond this fleeting appreciation, the complex has largely fallen into disrepair, sparking debate over the future of the barrio. This year, the town of Alboraia approved the ‘Vinival’ project, a redevelopment plan set to breathe new life into the complex. The project...
Just around the corner from Sol, Antigua Pastelería El Pozo, on Calle Pozo, has been serving traditional pastries since 1830. The very frills bakery has kept its original frilly decor this whole time and the pastry chefs continue to use artisanal techniques.
Going through the archives of Valencia's 1957 DANA, I realised I'd taken hauntingly similar photos just last week in Paiporta, so I decided to make direct comparisons by placing the images next to each other.
What this compilation demonstrates is that the same mistakes have been made twice. Predatory urban planning ignoring the limits of our planet, combined with institutional incompetence has led to the destruction of thousands of lives, again.
Bar El Diamante was one of the biggest, best and most frequented no-frills bars in El Rastro until the building on Calle Maldonadas 11 was purchased and evicted around 2016/17.
The layout of stations directly impacts people's mobility. Some cities have taken intermodality (the desire to make using more than one mode of transport during a single journey as easy as possible) as a serious issue, while others have not given importance. Albert explains that there are several key aspects to ensure quality to the transfers: "distance, the lack of architectural barriers, timetable coordination and a good wayfinding system, among others."
The Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid turned 278 this year, and has become a living museum with over 5,500 living species. Since its founding, it's also been a centre for scientific research with a vast library of over a million flora samples which are constantly being exchanged with other research centres across the globe.