By DPA
Madrid : The little girl was barely more than seven years old. Her left hand was making a fist while in her right hand she held a big stone.
With the angry gesture and worn-out shoes, the little girl was standing on the debris-covered ground facing the “enemy”: several police in anti-riot gear, equipped with protective helmets and shields, bats and guns loaded with rubber bullets.
The scene invoked images from the Middle East conflict, but it happened only 15 minutes away from the Madrid city centre in the largest slum in Spain and possibly in Europe.
The authorities would like to demolish the slum but they’re meeting the bitter resistance of its inhabitants.
When diggers recently came to demolish one of the illegal abodes, the slum’s residents clashed with the authorities. Some 200 residents attacked the police with stones, bottles and sticks. With around 40 injured on each side, nine people were arrested.
“Go away, we won’t be driven away like dogs and have you take away our houses!” the people chanted.
Police and residents accused each other of brutality.
“This is like war,” an official said. “Intifada in Madrid,” one of the dailies called it.
The area is called Canada Real, or royal strait. In the 13th century it was under the protection of King Alfonso X, who prohibited any building on the site. For a long time it was a cattle track. However, the area now located near a waste incinerating plant no longer lives up to its name.
Along a 15 km stretch there are some 8,000 houses and huts inhabited by a total of 40,000 residents. Pubs, a hotel, a church and a mosque are all part of it. Some of the huts are made of brick, many of them are made of wood and corrugated iron. They’re called Chabolas.
Many Spaniards only realized that there was a slum the size of Canada Real in a country that has been seeing an unprecedented economic boom when images of the riots were shown on television. Many of the residents are immigrants from Morocco or from Central and Eastern Europe, and there are also many Spanish travellers.
The settlement of the area began around 40 years ago, but the city administration or the regional government never really did anything about it. Now the authorities want to take drastic action. Because the ground belongs to the state, any construction on it is illegal.
“We have a first-rate social problem on our hands: crime, drug abuse and a whole lot of poor people. The situation is getting worse and worse,” the mayor of the neighbouring Rivas district, Jose Masa, says.
Many residents refuse to be lumped together. Canada Real is not just full of junkies, drug dealers or crooks. Many people also earn honest money, they say.
The slum has different “sectors” with multi-level family homes. The houses might often be unplastered but their owners have invested a lot of money into them over the years – like the Moroccan Abdul Lilah, whose house has just been torn down.
“I will rebuild it,” he says. Some of the other residents are collecting money and buying him bricks.
Like other residents, Lilah claims his rights according to common law. After all, he says, he is paying for power and electricity. He even pays property tax.
“They have suffered us for years, now they have to legalise our situation, not drive us away,” he says.
The residents are also taking legal action and they have been successful. One judge has just halted the planned demolition of another seven houses by preliminary injunction because, according to her ruling, the Spanish constitution grants the right to a habitation.