Shanty towns persist in central Madrid despite 30 demolition orders

Madrid City Council has demolished around 30 substandard dwellings on the M-30 hillside next to the A-2 and on the 'scalextric' stretch of Puente de Vallecas, but the settlements reappear a few metres away. Between the Costa Rica bridge and the Chamartín waste collection point, four or five makeshift structures remain standing.

Shanty towns are not a relic of the sixties. In Madrid, just a few minutes' walk from Arturo Soria street, next to Plaza de José María Soler and between the Costa Rica bridge on the M-30 and the fixed waste collection point in Chamartín run by the City Council, an improvised settlement has taken hold. Four or five structures built from belongings, remains of bonfires and rubbish. It is not an isolated case: several settlements have been detected in that area in recent years.

## Demolitions that do not solve the problem

Madrid City Council has cleared around **30 substandard dwellings** on the M-30 hillside near the **A-2** and on the 'scalextric' stretch of **Puente de Vallecas**. The operation is part of a municipal plan to clear shanty towns from the M-30 area, which began at the Ventas embankment. The result on the ground is different: the shacks are torn down and rebuilt nearby. That is how those who live alongside them sum it up.

The gap between rhetoric and reality is marked by the calendar. In the **Cañada Real** (a large informal settlement on the outskirts of Madrid), four shacks have been demolished, leaving a family with children and a young couple on the street. The pattern repeats: the excavator arrives, the dwelling disappears and, a few days later, another appears a hundred metres away.

## Living in a shack next to the M-30

Some people choose to sleep in these structures during the winter despite the existence of public resources. "It's better than a social centre," sums up a person living in the shacks by the M-30. The remark is no exaggeration: it describes the gap between institutional support and what those with nowhere to go actually find. The cold, the lack of running water and the insecurity weigh less than the freedom of having a roof of one's own, even if it is made of corrugated fibre cement.

The profile is not uniform. Homeless people, families evicted from rented housing and workers earning below the housing threshold all live side by side. The **M-30** acts as an invisible border: on one side, the 'scalextric' and the traffic; on the other, the waste collection point and the square.

## Shanty towns grow by 25% in a decade

The phenomenon is not limited to Madrid. Shanty towns in Spain have surged by **25% in ten years**, according to figures used by social organisations, and the trend continues to rise. The 2008 crisis, the pandemic and rising rents have pushed thousands of people into makeshift solutions. The **Madrid City Council** acknowledges the existence of settlements, but its policy focuses on demolition and not always on rehousing.

The comparison with the **Cañada Real** is inevitable. Thousands of people live there in conditions that the courts have described as a housing emergency. Selective demolitions, with no alternative accommodation, move the problem a few metres away instead of solving it. The question that remains is an uncomfortable one: what happens to those who see their shack turned into rubble on a Tuesday morning?