After the hottest summer on record, the skies are filled with constant lightning and the fiesta grounds are intermittently flooding. But nothing can stop the smoke machines pluming into the neon lights of the fairground rides, or the pounding of reggaeton while families and friends bump each other on the dodgem dance floor. Here’s a snapshot of the summer fiestas in Villa de Vallekas.
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. The country experienced its third heaviest rainfall on record which Spain’s weather agency AEMET predicted, but miscalculated the timings.
If it weren’t for the Spanish people taking to the streets and social media, creating new chants and slogans, Rubiales would never have hit the headlines and the newspapers would surely have moved on by now.
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.
In last few days, polls and right-leaning media published that a lurch to the far-right in Spain was all but inevitable. They were so adamant, it felt as though they were almost willing on a far-right shift. Fortunately, and against the so-called odds, Spaniards put just enough left-wing slips in the ballot boxes to stop the far-right trend we’re seeing elsewhere in Europe, keeping the country on the most progressive track in its history.
Pool tickets go on sale online 49 hours before doors open. Within two or three minutes, all 585 tickets to the city centre’s only public outdoor pool, Peñuelas, are gone.
Over the past few weeks, a conspiracy theory grew that a few people were monopolising tickets, booking them quickly and then selling them off to their friends. The theory appeared partly true when a 400-strong neighbourhood WhatsApp group called ‘Peñuelas pool’ hit the headlines, with members being called a “mafia of families”.
A group of local activists launched the citizens’ initiative #termometrada on Saturday with the aim of regularly reading temperatures in 169 locations around Madrid. Measurements will be taken at various times of the day: at sunrise, two hours after sunset, and at 5pm, when heat peaks across the city. Readings are taken electronically, at head-height and in the shade. After several minutes, the reading will settle and can be recorded.
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.
Yesterday afternoon, our neighbour Concha was attacked and killed in her clothing shop, Vistebien, on Plaza Tirso de Molina. The 61-year-old grandmother-to-be was stabbed in her abdomen by a man presumed to be attempting to rob her.
Madrid’s new Museum of Royal Collections has unexpectedly become home to the most significant Muslim heritage site in the city. Next month, the King and Queen of Spain will unveil a recently rediscovered section of the founding settlement of Madrid – the oldest known part of the 9th-century Islamic wall. The find has prompted a shift in the narrative around the capital’s origins as an Islamic outpost, confirming that Madrid did indeed start out as a Muslim settlement.
In 2018, the small port of Barbate in Cádiz hosted an eerie exhibition of disused pateras (small boats). The Town Hall’s plan was to raise public awareness around the phenomenon of irregular immigration and the human drama for people who risk their lives to cross the Strait.
As of today, 70 people are still missing, 22 remain in the Nador morgue and at least 37 were killed. Even though the Guardia Civil claimed to have had blood-soaked uniforms during the incident, none of them were harmed.
We don’t know for sure what the origin of the famous Callejón de los Negros (Alley of the Blacks) is, but from the port, this street is the closest access route into the historic centre of Cádiz, and therefore was perhaps the main street through which slaves would commute.
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.