The Ley de Vivienda is a brand-new housing law, the first of its kind in Spain, created by the current government. It is Podemos candidate Alejandra Jacinto who pushed for this law and who is hoping, if voted for, to have the powers to enforce it in the Comunidad de Madrid.
On Tuesday 16 May, around 5000 firefighters from Coordinadora Unitaria de Bomberos Profesionales (CUBP) travelled from all over Spain to the capital to demonstrate their frustrations over government delays in updating a law that, if approved, would allow firefighting services across the country to tackle incidents based on which unit is closest.
After months of drought, Madrid’s skies chose the weekend of the San Isidro festival to be the day it poured down over the city. Despite momentarily rushing to shelter in food tents and under pine trees, or even under picnic blankets with complete strangers, nothing could stop the Fiestas San Isidro, as you can see in these photos!
Each year, the barrio of Lavapiés selects a few young girls between ages six and 15 to sit on the makeshift but highly decorated altars surround the popular church of San Lorenzo.
“My abuelo opened this place 90 years ago, before the Spanish Civil War. During the war, people used to come here to collect their rations of flour and my abuelo would have to sign their rations cards.
In winter 2021, Madrid experienced the worst snowstorm in 300 years and lost around 80,000 trees. A year later, the city council planted 90,620 saplings, but by summer – the city’s hottest on record – 77% of them had died. Ecologistas en Acción explained: “They left the saplings abandoned and without watering at the height of summer,” rightly claiming that this mass recklessness could and should have been prevented.
It’s one of those perfectly no-frills bars where you can get Valdepeñas wine – for ¢80. When I shared these photos on social media, comments came pouring in. The unassuming no-frills bar in Barrio San Cristobal that I’d stumbled across quite by accident turns out to be in the hearts of so many of you. Here’s a small selection.
As a long-term renter not out of choice, this is pretty much how I see it. But there are fundamental differences and multiple discriminatory factors at play.
Madrid’s Municipal elections are on Sunday, May 28, 2023. If you’re an EU citizen or from the following countries, you have the right to vote!
Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom.
A residential building owned by the state-owned ‘bad bank’ SAREB was deliberately set on fire on Wednesday morning in what is set to become the most violent mass eviction in Spain since the 2008 crisis began.
“I was not a professional but I managed to take regular photos and, above all, to give them life. I feel happy because if I hadn’t been there, these photos wouldn’t exist. A story that is not documented or photographed does not exist.”
Todo lo que pides se imprime en mi imprenta del barrio. Todos los embalajes proceden de mi papelería familiar de Lavapiés. Todos los pedidos se envían por Correos. Y los demás se entregan en persona por mí, Leah!
On Wednesday May 12, 1886, according to several reports at the time, the whole of Spain woke up to strong storms. By 6pm that same day, a tornado touched down in the capital and began a diagonal line of destruction between the then-town of Carabanchel and Madrid’s city-centre Retiro Park.
I’ve been a resident of Lavapiés for almost 10 years. In that time, even though a lot has changed, there have been a lot of constants. Police are everywhere. Gentrification – the systematic loss of the barrio’s traditional bars, shops and markets – is a day-to-day reality here. On most streets, spray-painted bedsheets hang from balconies expressing an array of concerns from noise pollution and touristification to drug dealing and evictions. Large tour groups that snake through our streets and cluster on our squares have long incorporated the stories of our struggles into their voyeuristic spiel.
Today, the demolition of this beautiful neomudéjar building in Tetuán will resume and, by the end of the week, the iconic 1925 workers’ housing block will be gone forever, despite fierce resistance from the neighbourhood.