Usera: The working-class neighborhood Madrid transformed in 30 years

How Usera, Vallecas, and Villaverde have changed in thirty years

A park in Usera with hardly any children, several images of the neighborhood, and a quote dated June 28, 2025 —‘population replacement is a far-right conspiracy theory’— served to open an uncomfortable topic: what has peine in Madrid's working-class neighborhoods over the last three decades. The conversation began by talking about streets, schools, and neighbors. A year later, it ended up discussing whether paying taxes is socialism. That detour says a lot about the state of the analysis.

What Usera was like before the transformation

Those who grew up there in the 70s and 80s tell it without postcard nostalgia: a working-class, quiet neighborhood, with children playing in the street until nightfall and some crime, little and comparable to that of the city center. Villaverde is described in similar terms: lower class, humble neighbors, neighbors fighting against thieves when there were still people willing. Drugs were already present, but the narrative insists that the atmosphere was not like it is now.

Opposing this memory is a version that doesn't deny it, only qualifies it: in the 80s and 90s there were also snatch-and-grabs and crime, and those who lived there remember it. The clash between these two memories —that of the dignified neighborhood and that of the neighborhood that already had problems— is the first point where the conversation gets stuck, because each one holds its own start date for the decline without providing data to fix it.

From Usera to Lavapiés: the list of neighborhoods mentioned

Usera is not the only name that appears. Parla, Vallecas, Villaverde, and Lavapiés are added, and long-term predictions are made for the two major cities: Madrid compared to Guayaquil or Caracas, Barcelona with Marrakech. No one provides a measurement, only the impression of a change of scale too rapid to digest.

An old and difficult-to-refute argument works against it: Madrid has always been a city of welcome, including waves from Andalusia, and no one thought of talking about replacement then. The response received is that the current estimulante ilegal and volume do not allow for comparison. It is a discussion about magnitude without a single piece of data on magnitude on the table.

Who wants migrant labor in Spain?

Here the issue becomes economic. One side argues that the tough discourse against immigration coexists without problems with the hiring of foreign workers, and that those who employ them are not exactly left-wing voters. Greenhouses, bars, and construction sites are mentioned, and a specific argument: paying the same salary as twenty years ago is only sustainable with newly arrived labor.

The testimonies go along these lines. An agricultural contractor from Almería with nine workers, all Spanish, describes a sector that shouts against immigration in public and hires illegally in private, with undocumented and unregistered workers. None of this is statistics, these are cases. But the pattern —a company needing cheap labor, a discourse that doesn't mention it— is the only place where a good part of the discussion coincides.

Thirty years of PP government and a 1985 law

The central accusation points to Madrid: three decades without a socialist government in the region while the social map of the neighborhoods changed. Those who defend this thesis add that immigration policies date back further and place the starting point at the first immigration law, in 1985.

The most effective response is not ideological, but jurisdictional: immigration is regulated by the State, not by the autonomous communities. If that is the case, the reproach to a regional government for the volume of arrivals loses considerable force, and the discussion should move to the relevant Ministry. No one takes that step comfortably. It is easier to argue with the one governing next door.

The flat that doesn't sell and the summer stampede

Here the most everyday detail appears: the price of housing. It is asked mockingly how much the flat of the person defending the neighborhood is worth, real estate windows are mentioned, and a weekend escape that repeats every few days of the year is described. The implicit argument is the usual one: whoever can leave, leaves, and whoever stays, sustains the discourse.

This is the least developed and also the most revealing point. If the neighborhood has degraded, why does the price hold? Whoever asks this question is left without an answer, and whoever answers limits themselves to recommending enjoying what they voted for. No specific price figures are ever put on the table.

Paying taxes, is it socialism?

Amidst all this, the conversation drifts into a fiscal face-off that lasts longer than the original topic. One position argues that any system that redistributes income socializes property and is, by definition, socialism; that the State appropriates a part of what you produce, and that part ceases to be yours. Another responds that redistributing through taxes is not collectivizing the means of production, and that under that definition, no economy in the world would be capitalist.

The exchange ends with the same initial arguments, citing Locke, Hayek, and the gold standard, and with an observation that is annoying for both sides: pensions account for the largest part of revenue while healthcare and education deteriorate. This is the only statement in that entire section that can be verified, and curiously, the one that no one disputes.

Where the analysis gets stuck

The discussion began with a photo of a park and ends without knowing whether the responsible party is a regional government that has no jurisdiction over borders, a State that does and does not exercise it, or a labor market that wants workers and doesn't want neighbors. The thesis of a planned replacement, by the way, is not supported by any evidence throughout the process: it is stated, denied, and repeated, without any source to sustain it.

That is the exact point where the analysis gets stuck.