Calle de Preciados, one of the busiest commercial streets in Madrid, is deserted when Gustavo Gaviria, a 29-year-old Colombian, takes it on his Moma bicycle, a folding, electric model, "95% modified", with which he It has covered about 30,000 kilometers in two and a half years. He is dressed in black, with military boots and pants that give him the air of belonging to an urban guerrilla. A yellow backpack hangs from his back. At the moment it is empty. His shift begins at two. Barely half an hour left. He continues towards Puerta del Sol. And in the middle of the street, wrapped in silence, the blowout of his rear wheel is clearly heard, followed by a copious leak of air.
"He had 4,000 kilometers without a puncture," calculates Gaviria shortly afterwards as he takes apart the puzzle of his bicycle at the foot of the Tío Pepe sign, in Sol. The Colombian shows the busted rubber, with patches at five points. A patrol approaches and they suggest that the street "is not a workshop", but when checking their employment they let him continue. Throughout the day, the police will stop you four times. In none of the controls will have problems. "The backpack has become a safe-conduct these days," he says.
They are cubic bags, bright colors, recognizable hundreds of meters. Walking advertising. And at the same time a spacious thermal bag. Yellow: Glovo. Turquoise: Deliveroo. Green: Uber Eats. The unmistakable sign of the delivery men, turned into the unexpected kings of the empty cities. Hard workings of the platform economy. Maximum exponents of the uberization of employment and the world. A glimpse, perhaps, of the "new normal" that comes to us. More virtual and technological, and perhaps more precarious. Directed by an algorithm. Prepared for a quarantined life, with a majority in their homes and a few in the streets. Arrows moving from one side to the other to carry anything at home. Some by car, many by motorcycle, most by bicycle.
"Now the street is yours," says Gaviria. Tanned in the early hours of a city "that did not sleep", the city reminds him of a "movie set", an "inhospitable", "overwhelming", "silent" place. It is April 20, the de-escalation measures have not yet started. “You change gears and you can hear it everywhere. It is disturbing. ” Also, he adds, it is a city with the cleanest air. Gaviria is a musician. He arrived in Spain in 2012 to study and open a “campito in the art world”. Pianist, composer and producer, he used to dedicate his afternoons to his and the early mornings to work as a cyclist for Glovo. The pandemic disrupted their aspirations: "The most expendable now may be culture." He decided to increase the bike hours and reduce the art hours: now he only practices, so as not to lose his level at the piano. He lives with his girlfriend, cellist and rider, in a loft with views of the stars where they cohabit with their instruments and two folding bicycles. She stopped pedaling to avoid contagion. Gaviria sees it differently: "Cycling is an escape route." He is not "afraid" but he is "respectful" of the virus. His ears are red from wearing the mask.
After 40 minutes, he reassembles the puzzle and inflates the wheel with a “battery pump” that he keeps in his backpack. With black hands, he reflects: "People receive an order and don't know what's behind it." He climbs back into his Moma, finds a fountain to wash himself in, puts on his half-finger gloves and says: "Let's start the day."
Before long, his mobile phone announced a first order to pick him up at the Rodilla sandwich shop in Sol. The place is closed to the public, like everyone else. It only works for orders. An employee leans out with a bag and hands it to Gaviria. He takes a picture of the receipt. Put the package in the backpack. And although the application suggests a 6.5 kilometer route to the destination, on the banks of the Manzanares, the cyclist prefers to trace his, scratching the algorithm for a few pennies. The descent through the streets of the Rastro is pleasant. The sun shines, it is spring, the lonely streets allow you to go by any lane. Soon, Gaviria reaches his goal. It enters a residential block whose common areas have been sealed. In the elevator there is a sign with the rules during the confinement. It is almost four o'clock and the woman who opens the door, when asked how she is carrying it, answers: "Well ...". It has triplets. Four years. He just finished feeding them. She has ordered ready-made sandwiches for her. Gaviria adds 5.37 euros to the account.
After the first order, it is normal to let yourself go. A rider knows where it starts, not where it ends. As it is a “valley hour”, Gaviria proposes going to the Salamanca neighborhood, where from four o'clock “the action begins”. These days of coronavirus, he says, demand is "volatile." Lunch and dinner spikes have given way to grocery shopping, which are often reaching their zenith now. Crossing Madrid by bike, you can see fragments of what we have all experienced: a boy who celebrates his birthday on a terrace and receives shouting congratulations from passers-by; a heart suspended on the street, hanging between balconies; a poster with the message: "Together we will do it".
The feeling is Sunday. But a strange one, because there are no children, no laughter, no one walks with anyone or talks with anyone, and most vehicles are transporting goods or buses, although it is perceived that the city begins to start with the return of activities not essential. Behind Alcalá's door, the Retiro sprouts an intense scent of wild and runaway nature. At O'Donnell's height, Gaviria skipped another request. You have to go to a store called Juicy Avenue, specialized in juices, next to the Goya metro. Its owner confesses that he survives thanks to the fact that home delivery has been allowed. He has temporarily laid off his employees, but at least he gives him to pay the rent. Delivery is very close, in the heart of this high-income neighborhood. It is picked up on the portal by a young woman who explains: "They are juices, for a snack." Gaviria adds 2.94 euros. Immediately afterwards, a new distribution falls to him: he has to go to a Carrefour for a purchase of fruit and vegetables: limes, sweet potatoes, dates, bananas, beans, oranges, strawberries, beets ... About six kilos that he delivers in the street of Castelló , four minutes. In the narrow elevator he hardly enters with his backpack. He puts the bags on the floor and a woman and a child look at him from behind the door. Other 2.97 euros.
Immediately a new order jumps: this is double, and must be collected at Super Glovo, a kind of grocery store. There are two in Madrid. They do not open to the public. They only supply the delivery men. And they are found in nondescript streets, without any sign on the door. No one would say what they are hiding except because handfuls of riders swirl nearby . They operate 24 hours, and next to the entrance of this one there is a handwritten sign: "Keep safe distance, please!". Gaviria looks out and gives the reference number of your order.
In front of the door, in his van, is Iris Arroyo, a 48-year-old from Madrid who has been distributing about 10 hours a day these days. With the experience that the street gives him, he describes the commercial evolution during the pandemic. “In the first weeks people bought like it was the apocalypse. The toilet paper was true, "he says. “Many hospitality shops closed, including McDonald's, which was the most common. But grocery, pharmacy and tobacconist purchases rose. ” Then the restaurants reopened, but only for home delivery. Many new ones signed up. "For them it has been the only way to have income and keep the workforce." Lately, it perceives a decrease in consumption. "You notice the layoffs and the ERTEs that are not charged."
Although business volume has declined across the sector, delivery companies are savoring the "new world" opportunities. In the words of a manager of one of them: “The transformation will be bestial. Everything is going to change, education, restaurants, shops. The pandemic is going to accelerate many things. In a matter of months we will see what would have taken years. " He asks us to imagine what will happen when someone sneezes next to us in a room. "The take-away is going to increase wildly," he says. Glovo, market leader, gives some information on the current state: 70% of the businesses with which it collaborated in March are still closed; But supermarket purchases have grown by 450% and the number of home food orders by almost 50%. However, the number of its “active” dealers, some 8,000 before the pandemic, has fallen by nearly 20%. Almost half of them go by bicycle.
The riders are autonomous. They usually combine orders from various platforms, just as they wear a mix of raincoats, pants and backpacks of all of them. To work with Uber Eats they only have to be available. At Deliveroo they are stricter about timetables and areas. With Glovo they must be aware of the mobile and catch free time slots. "Hunt for hours", in the slang. This shift system is reminiscent of a video game: the dealer accumulates points through different parameters, such as seniority, customer ratings or what they call “diamonds” in the jargon (an extra point for deliveries during high demand hours) ). The maximum is 100 points. The closer one gets, the better access to "hunting" hours. That is why they must be on the move, mobile at the ready.
Even before the pandemic, the working conditions of the riders were questioned. These days, companies have been criticized harshly, despite the fact that some claim to have introduced protection measures, such as the "contactless delivery" protocol. According to Robert Castro, a lawyer for the Free Riders union: "The dealers are exposed, they take risks and suffer psychological stress."
When Gaviria leaves with his order, at the door of Super Glovo another delivery man asks the person in charge to heat the lid. Then we follow him to the steps of a nearby parish where he meets with other riders to eat, rest and chat, always pending the mobile. They are about a dozen, all Venezuelans, most of them in their twenties and crestfallen. "It has been a bad day," says Enrique Zurbarán, 27, who arrived 4 years ago in Madrid with his wife. In Caracas he worked in a bank. They usually sit here because Glovo's warehouse is next door and the probability that the algorithm attributes an order to them increases. Zurbarán has already worked eight hours. He says that on a good day he may be able to raise 100 euros. Bad days, like this, are of various kinds: "From 10, 20 or 50 euros."
Anas Abou, another 24-year-old Venezuelan, says that everyone has come because of "the country's situation." Many have managed to obtain the “red card”, which grants residence in Spain for humanitarian reasons (in 2019 more than 40,000 Venezuelans obtained it). They often share accommodation. Whole families work as delivery men. According to Glovo, 43% of its "collaborators" in Spain are of Venezuelan origin. In Madrid, they reach 60%.
The boys on the steps wonder every now and then: "Has something fallen on you?" And if it falls, the addresses are sung: "Lope de Rueda with Duque de Sesto". One comments that he is on a bicycle that a compatriot rents for five euros a week. "We help us". Another shoots out, but first he turns on the speaker that hangs from his backpack and a trickle of drums is floating in the air. They have tricks to survive the street: in such a supermarket they are still allowed to go to the bathroom; And there is a place nearby that serves coffee, if you know how to order it. The fence is half. You have to call the glass, the owner appears:
"Would you like me a coffee?"
"Sorry, I can't sell it to you."
"Wow ...
"But I can give it to you."
"And can I give you something in return?"
-How do you want it? Milky?
Before saying goodbye, Abou adds that he returns home after a day in which he has earned 35 euros, "little". With the old rates, he protests, they would have been "at least 50." A month after the state of alarm was decreed, Glovo applied in different cities a reduction of 50% of the "base rate" (similar to the lowering of a taxi flag): it went from 2.50 to 1.20 euros per order. Although accompanied by bonuses, with which the company claims that the average income per service has increased, dozens of riders improvised a protest on the empty streets.
"It was a spontaneous demonstration," says Fernando García, a 41-year-old from Zaragoza, who usually works with Glovo and Uber Eats, another afternoon. “We discovered the descent mid-shift. Neither was negotiated with the distributors, nor were we previously informed. " García is pedaling on an electric bicycle with 11 years old, the broken headlight and 25,000 kilometers in tow. Her long hippy hair , pinned upside down, flutters in the wind. This cyclist has already been a member of the LGBT movement. As a rider, he accumulates considerable anger: “I find it insulting that we lower our rates in the middle of the pandemic. If you are going to do it, at least do not choose the moment when I am exposing myself, risking my health and that of my family and friends. Don't be so mean. " (Other dealers, such as Gustavo Gaviria and Iris Arroyo, explain that after their initial anger they have not seen a drop in income).
Garcia has just finished his four-hour day. It is six in the afternoon on a Tuesday when he is driving through Bravo Murillo and stops at a point loaded with companions. Say hello here and there. They offer him something to eat. "Tomorrow there is a strike," he reminds them. "Because of Glovo?" Replies a Venezuelan. "There are many who go to work," adds this man who works 11 hours on a motorcycle. "My spine is killing me," he complains.
Garcia is called by his classmates the "crazy Spaniard". For years he worked as an accountant in an office, "a shit job." He got into the cast "for the pleasure of riding a bike." "But just because I like my job doesn't mean I can be stepped on." The "crazy" thing has to do with their demands. We reached him through the Free Riders platform, which has defended the dealers in different lawsuits to demand their equalization with the workforce. The Superior Courts of Justice of various autonomies, including Madrid and Catalonia, have recognized covert labor in different cases, explains Robert Castro of Free Riders. In the absence of the Supreme Court ruling, García considers that this is the underlying problem: “As we are false self-employed, we have the worst in each world. We cannot negotiate rates, nor do we have the protection of an agreement. ” The model, he adds, hinders its organization and cohesion, the basis of a movement. "A group of freelancers is like a herd of cats."
After his wake we arrived at another Super Glovo, in the Chamberí district, where he continues to broadcast the “strike” the next day. Enzo Carpenzano, a 51-year-old Venezuelan, agrees: “Everything good for them and everything bad for us. There has to be a balance. " To another compatriot they deliver an order that, by eye, exceeds 15 kilos. Garcia helps him put on his backpack and the guy stumbles on his way to his bike. When asked what is the secret to transport it, he answers: "Be poor."
Ricardo Zabala, 29, works “to the lung”, that is: with the sole impulse of his legs. At the warehouse they deliver an order to be taken to Malasaña. Then he has arranged to have dinner at a Mexican with his wife, who is currently pedaling towards another home. We follow him on a gentle descent, he skips traffic lights, in others he meets colleagues from fatigue, and on Calle de San Bernardo he turns left in the forbidden direction in front of a camouflaged police car. Zabala hears a siren on his back, then a notice from the megaphone: "We have a 500 euro gift!" He stops on the cobblestones of Calle del Pez in front of a graffiti: "Covid-19, weapon of the Government." The police couple ask for an accreditation. Once verified, they are friendly. They are concerned about the growing shipments of drugs through delivery men. They have found everything in double backpacks. Even a joint already bundled inside a food container. While showing photos of recent seizures they are surprised by the applause of the eight, and they join. The balconies are full and the celebration concludes with talks between neighbors and a David Bowie song that a DJ plays for the whole street: “This is ground control to Major Tom”.
By then, Zabala has already delivered his order. We meet him again at another key point for riders, in Alonso Martínez, where a taco and a burritos joint converge, whose kitchens smoke at this time. Night falls and Zabala's wife, Raquel Suárez, 27, arrives by bike. He exclaims: "My ass hurts now!" A while ago, right here, you saw an emergency team put on their PPE, enter a building, and leave with a corpse. Then she had to bring cleaning products that a man sent to his elderly parents. They have given him 20 euros as a tip. The sensations are contradictory, he tells as he devours a burrito from the local that is one meter away. You have not purchased it directly. Is prohibited. He has asked for it with his mobile and a rider has given it to him in hand.
A few years ago, this marriage lost their baby and they decided to fly to Spain. A friend had told them about the trade. As soon as he landed, Zabala bought a bicycle and took to the streets, to ask someone to rent him an account. For a time he worked with the profile of another rider, to whom he paid 30% of his earnings. His bike was stolen. He even delivered on foot. At the start of the pandemic, they continue, wearing gloves, a mask and disinfecting even the elevator buttons. They went out to work with "paranoia." Now, with the prices of these items skyrocketing, they do so "entrusted to God." (This report was closed before the price of these items was regulated).
On the sidewalk, there are backpacks of all colors. The delivery men come and go, they sit on the benches and on the shops' stands. One of them scribbles the verses of a poem in a notebook with a pencil. He is an anthropologist, prefers not to give his name. He worked in the Amazon with the Yanomami Indians. It arrived 10 months ago. Read aloud: "Nobody establishes the syllogism / of the silkworm (...) Stargames that perhaps / already forget how to die a siesta". Spark. The poet keeps his notebook in the Uber Eats backpack, approaches the taco shop and knocks on the window to request his next deal.