Madrid No Frills

Mame Mbaye, his disputed cause of death and his anti-racism legacy explained

Mame Mbaye was a Senegalese migrant who arrived in Madrid in 2006, and three years ago yesterday he died. There are two very different versions of what happened: one reported by the police and the other by his friends. The police version stands, but the 12 years leading up to his death match up far more with the account of his friends, that what killed Mame Mbaye was institutional racism.

The Riders’ Law explained

I met Ángel (not his real name) waiting in the dinner queue of Vecinas de Lavapies food bank last summer. It would cost him at least one hour's work to feed himself, and another job to get the metro back to his sister's house where he was staying.

Storm Filomena

Now that the last remaining piles of snow have finally melted away, let's reflect on a fortnight of Filomena's presence in this city. With zero Council preparations and unprecedented snowfall, how did Filomena's force unfold and take Madrid from its most beautiful to a disaster zone?

Stolpersteine reveal Madrid’s Nazi war camp victims’ last chosen address

Over 75,000 Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been installed across Europe, marking where victims of Nazi war camps last lived by choice. Each small golden stone bears the name of the victim, their date of birth, the date of their camp deportation and when their lives ended – there are so far 12 in Madrid.

Lavapiés’ food banks keep going: sun, rain or snow

When Mario talks about the snow, he can’t help but smile. He’s from Romania, and has been living in Madrid for the past eight years, but on the streets of Fuencarral for the past two after losing his job as a truck driver.

“I’m tired”: our naïve nostalgia for Madrid’s no-frills bars

I’m proud to say that I grew up frequenting the neighbourhood bars of La Latina with my dad, and I have fond memories of their no-frills charm. But it took me many years living abroad in Denmark to appreciate the cultural richness of my barrio, and it came mixed with nostalgia and grief at the places that had closed.

The House of Suitcases

"Is it busy out there?" asks Isabelle, owner of La Casa de Maletas in El Rastro. That day was the first day of the Rastro for eight months, since the pandemic shut Europe's largest open-air flea market down in the second week of March.

The Cañada Real: “Electricity is not a privilege, it’s a right”

On 2 October, a power outage left around 1,000 houses in a Madrid neighbourhood without electricity. Almost 60 days later, the lines have still not been repaired – a situation that seems hard to believe, except for the fact that this neighbourhood is Sector 6 of the Cañada Real.