The Ten Faces of Madrid's Anti-Rent Encampment in Sol

Sol, third night: 900 euros salary and a room without a window

Nora Otxoteko is 21 and pays 400 euros for a room whose window, she says, isn't a window: it opens onto a wall that lets in no light. In the same shared flat, another tenant pays 700 euros for a similar room, just for having arrived later. She is one of the ten faces portrayed in the report on the Puerta del Sol encampment, which as of this discussion is facing its third night with Madrid residents and people from outside the region.

Who sleeps in Sol and how much they pay for a roof

Alejandra Ojeda, 25, earns 900 euros a month at a bookstore. To live in Moncloa, she shares a room with her partner in a flat where five other people live. "It's a hostel inside a flat," she describes. It's the tenth flat she's lived in since arriving in the capital eight years ago.

Alejandro Coronel, 24, earns another 900 in an architecture internship and pays 330 euros for a room in Lucero. He calls himself "very lucky." His alternative was his village, Villa del Prado, and five hours of daily public transport. Lucky is the word: "It's incredible that being lucky today means that when it should be normal."

A little further on appears Carlota Antón, 37, a designer who works remotely from the shop itself. And Lore Navarro, 29, a comedian, who sums up her sector: comedy is booming because trivializing is what's left when the future is missing.

The one-year contract: the recurring demand

The story doesn't talk about large landlords. It talks about contracts. "No one gives us contracts longer than a year. I hope this stops speculation and that indefinite rent is regulated," says Alejandra. The demand, made without further detail, points to a rental regime without an annual expiration date.

There's another generation in the same square. David Palomo, 61, has two children, 27 and 31, at home who work and save but can't find a way out: every time they gather money to buy, prices have risen again. "As a father, my place is here," he states. Juan Camacho, 74, sums it up from his shop: the only solution left for his daughter is not to leave home.

How the story has been read: skepticism and suspicion

The response to the report divides into three currents. Some argue that the encampment doesn't address a real housing problem but rather people who would have alternatives—villages with empty houses, they say—and that the protest is more posturing than need. Others read the issue as a media operation: a calculated staging of faces to cover up other issues and give air to a political cause. And a third questions the profile of the campers themselves, pointing out details of their image as contradictory to the story of hardship.

None of these readings provides figures. All are interpretations, and the original material doesn't support them either: what there is are ten testimonies, two declared salaries, and several room prices.

The data that unsettles is not on the banner but in the record. Among the ten campers, two declare 900 euros a month and none pays less than 330 euros for a room. Alejandra's tenth floor—eight years, ten flats—tells better than any proclamation what living on rent in Madrid has become.