BY ED ANDERSON
If you were to step off at Manuela Malasaña metro in Móstoles in July, you´d be greeted by a typical Madrid satellite town. A Basic Fit here, a baking Plaza del Sol there and a smattering of bars that thankfully won´t be changing you 5 euros a caña. Mercifully, there is not an instagrammer in sight.
However, hidden away here and in a dozen similar locations were the victims of Spain´s worst wildfires on record that swept across Avila and the region of Madrid, forcing Madrid´s evacuation of over 50,000 people (‘It’s a hell of a situation’: Spain grapples with major wildfires) and over 20,000 lockdown orders.
Tucked away around the back of another fitness centre is Polideportivo Paco Sedano, which found itself taking on a new use as a makeshift evacuation station. There were over 100 beds and people of all ages, from pensioner to toddler. Móstoles was hosting over 400 people across different sites. By the time we arrive breakfast is done and it´s quiet as people are happy to get out, even if it´s just to grab a coffee five minutes up the road. A group of old ladies sit on the makeshift terrace with their cats as we are greeted by the officials.
Already press are here, with video, seemingly unconcerned by the voyeurism of filming people in distress in the one place they have for shelter. Even more ghoulishly, council workers helping on site informed me of how some press were hanging around outside at 6am and ringing people in the middle of the night for information.
Javier Ventura considered himself one of the lucky ones, an eldery farmer who had been there over the weekend and was evacutated from his small town of Colmenar del Arroyo. Javier shows me a photo that makes Mordor look like a clear sky. His home is ok but people he is sharing the sports hall with, in places like Fresnedillas de la Oliva, may have been burnt out completely.
Javier, with a farm to get back to, is more concerned about the future after this weekend. “I have nuts, olives, livestock, that´s my concern.” As crises such as the one we have seen this year look set to be a theme, would that influence where Javier lives?
“Look, I´m 70 years old. If I was 25, I would leave. The youth have already left. I´ve been running my business for 40 years. What young people want is to be able to go out for a meal, to the cinema it´s all there (in Urban Madrid).” It´s not just the frivolities of life that Javier highlights pushing young people away. The main hospital for the people of his town? “It´s here” (in Móstoles). As the cost of fuel and even a second hand car puts a driving license (or at least the car) out of reach for many young people, more places like Colemenar are being envejecido (aged).
We are seeing more and more places like Colmenar become depopulated and media reports in Spain highlighting the lack of vigilance around zones to prevent fires before it’s too late. The costs of just being a farmer now, Javier informs me, are brutal.
As we head back in, officials inform us that for the kids it’s been easier. “It´s been like a campamento for them” as local residents flooded in with toys, books and clothing to make sure that they are ok. The complications are around medications as Pedro (Head of Mostoles´civil protection team and on site medical professional) tells me in between doing the rounds. “The first thing was to create the infrastructure, the second was the day to day stuff and then crucially, medicine.” When it comes to daily food and drink that was well taken care of, but when people had to leave their houses with just five minutes notice, they obviously couldn´t raid the medicine cabinet.
Luckily, the three local hospitales alongside the ability to electronically verify the medicine people need meant Pedro and those working with him were able to swiftly get people the help they needed. “When catastrophes like this happen, the solidarity between people blooms. “The real kicker is the uncertainty as “we can´t tell people when they can go back because we honestly don’t know.”
For people like Nuria Sanchez and her child from Fresnedilla (main photograph), “In our zone we saw videos with fires, there would be no security. The army has been sent in.” There are small crumbs of comfort in that many of these people, in the same boat, are close friends of her and her daughter. “We are going for little walks to try and distract ourselves and we are playing games. My intention is to try and distract her from the situation as much as possible.”
Nuria was quick to praise the community of Mostoles for rallying around their temporary residents, “the solidarity has been incredible, there´s been so much support in the street.” But of course, Nuria is desperate to get back:
If my house is safe we are going back because Fresnedilla is a small town (with 1800 people), it´s a beautiful place and it´s my home.”
It´s the afternoon now and that means several of the peñas groups (small cultural neighbourhood groups whose normal role is to organise parties across their barrios) are instead preparing the daily meal. Although it might not be traditional to have paella in Madrid, it was a welcome excuse for those in the sports hall to break up their day and have a semblance of normality. “The second the local council asked us to help, we were here” said one Peña.
As we head back to the metro and take a quick pit stop in Cerveceria de Cañas, the TV is full of yet another shouting match on TeleMadrid over who is responsible. Spanish politics can´t even wait for the crisis to be over before campaign mode (with a General election likely next year) is underway. Thankfully though, in a world of misery and disaster porn seemingly the order of the day (and the inevitable fatalism of action in those that consume it), it´s good to be reminded that away from the headlines, there are ordinary people performing acts of kindness which we are all able to emulate.
Even better news is that everyone in the Mostoles sports hall was able to return back to their areas by the end of the day that we arrived. For many others across Spain, it became an agonising summer of worry, fear and doubt.
Moving forward to the present day, it seems that those non urban areas of Madrid have already been politically forgotten. Madrid Regional President Ayuso in her new political ‘curso‘ on the first weekend of September had plenty of words for F1 but for the victims of the wildfire, there was little to say.
There was a lot of gloating from Ayuso on how Madrid (the urban areas, not towns like Javiers) is drawing in young people but when birth rates are collapsing to levels akin to the Civil War, maybe politicians should not be cheerleading for a model which shunts tens of thousands of young people into rat traps whilst some communities in her own region could easily be wiped off the map in a decade’s time. Just because she doesn´t have kids, I don´t think inflicting a childless future on her own countrymen is something to celebrate.
Back in their box rural communities across Spain go, until the next crisis.
Edward Anderson is currently living in Madrid covering Spanish life /politics and can be found online @MetinMadrid on Twitter or https://metinmadrid.com/
*Photos embedded in article used with permission of Ayuntamiento de Móstoles