It happens every weekday at around nine in the morning on the M-30 ring road.
A flood of cars rises from the south to the north in the middle of a traffic jam.
At six in the afternoon, the same flood begins to move, in the opposite direction, from north to south.
This pendulum movement indicates many things, but one of them is that the region is split in two: a rich north where jobs are accumulated and a poorer south where it is cheaper to live.
Or, better said: where a part of the population has to live.
The Community of Madrid, governed by the PP since 1995, has become a thriving region, with an economic machinery that works faster and faster and pumps out more wealth every year.
It has been growing for decades more than the Spanish average and years ago snatched from Catalonia the title of most powerful region in Spain.
In 1980 it generated 15.6% of Spanish GDP.
In 2017 it reached 18.9% and this year it already accounts for 19.3%.
Its population increases like no other in the country.
In 2000, the region was home to 5,200,000 inhabitants.
Today there are already 6,750,000.
It works like a kind of black hole that absorbs everything that floats around it.
Its centripetal force is one of the causes of the empty or emptied Spain.
You only need to travel to Segovia on one of those weekdays of traffic jam on the M-30 to see that the parking lot of the AVE station in this city is full of cars from Segovia who go to Madrid to work during the day and come back .
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Eight experts on social exclusion dismantle Ayuso's counselor: "If he doesn't see poor people, he shows his blindness"
The B side of all this economic dynamism in Madrid is shown, in addition to the daily round-trip traffic jams, in studies on inequality.
For example: in the periodic report
Social Exclusion and Poverty,
which the Foessa Foundation, linked to Caritas, presents from time to time.
In the last one, made public on March 15, the data on income inequality were worse than the previous one, from 2018, in turn worse than the previous ones.
From 2003 to 2017, according to Foessa, the income of the 20% richest inhabitants of the Community grew by 3% and that of the poorest 20% shrank by 29%.
More than the Spanish average.
This trend has continued to be marked during the pandemic: from 2018 to 2021 the richest people in Madrid have become richer again: 18%.
And the poorest to be poorer: 21%.
In recent years, if we divide the population of Madrid into five bands, in order of wealth, the first three grow, the fourth limps and the fifth, the poorest, falls off the hook.
According to one of the report's editors, Daniel Rodríguez, that is the real danger: “That the members of that last fringe are no longer capable of living like their neighbor.
They know that they are not going to be Florentino Pérez, but they want to continue being like the one next door”.
Luis Arturo Velasco is already traveling in this caboose.
He is 44 years old, lives in Navalcarnero, has worked as a bricklayer, a gardener or a porter.
He is now unemployed after being fired from a factory that made bandages.
He receives 400 euros of subsidy.
His partner, 300 for a part-time job at Carrefour.
They have two children and a house about to lose due to non-payment of the mortgage.
Every Monday they go to Cáritas for a bag of food.
Now they have just paid one of the four electricity bills they owe, to keep the company happy and thus try to avoid being cut off.
The anguish of not paying, of not being able to, of not arriving and of being kicked out of the house any day has caused Luis Arturo Velasco to have rampant hypertension that he conjures up with pills.
In one sentence he sums up what it means to end up in that last part of the report:
A square in Las Rozas, in rich Madrid.Álvaro García
The Ministry of Economy and Finance defends itself: "Many studies show that poverty is directly related to employment and that up to 80% of poverty is explained by lack of employment."
And he adds that, "between 2003 and 2022, membership in the Madrid region has grown by 22.9%, that is, 13.5% more than in the rest of Spain."
He also objects that, according to INE data, inequality in Madrid fell in 2017 and 2018.
One of the editors of the Cáritas report, Daniel Rodríguez, admits it: “It is true, but it is data from before the pandemic.
When the INE collects those from later, as we have done, inequality will rise again.
They have taken the period that interests them.
The general trend is that income inequality grows.
Experts warn that this gap is not only economic.
It affects, among other things, urban planning, health, education, the landscape and life expectancy.
Even obesity.
Or to the consumption of fruit.
The border is palpable.
You can almost see it: draw a diagonal that goes from the A-2, that crosses Madrid leaving the southern and eastern districts below and that connects with the A-5.
On one side and the other of that border, two different worlds are taking shape, each time more differentiated, each time more segregated.
Life expectancy by districts
The epidemiologist Manuel Franco, from the Community of Madrid, already warned in a study that there were more possibilities of contracting covid-19 if one lived in Leganés, in the southern part of the border, than in the Chamartín district.
And he recalls that, according to a report commissioned by the Madrid City Council in 2018, there are "significant" differences in life expectancy between the northern and southern districts.
In Barajas, for example, men live 84.6 years and women 88.3.
In Puente de Vallecas, 79.6 years and 86, respectively.
The economist specializing in inequality Olga Cantó explains that, beyond the differences in income, another type of segregation prevails in the Community of Madrid, which is more harmful because it is projected into the future: “The persistence of inequality harms equality of opportunities.
And in this regard, it should be noted that Madrid is the region where there is more segregation at school”.
That is to say: the region is a champion in separating rich schoolchildren from poor schoolchildren and vice versa.
According to the report
Social Needs in Spain,
of the La Caixa Foundation, of July 2020, the Community of Madrid presents a school segregation rate of 27.1%.
This means that 27% of students would have to change schools or institutes so that the Madrid classrooms would have a perfect economic homogenization.
The rate in Catalonia, the second in segregation in the country, is 24%.
The one that presents the least is the Balearic Islands, with 15%.
Some boys play soccer in a park in the neighborhood of La Ventilla, with the towers of Plaza de Castilla in the background.
Alvaro Garcia
The sociologist Daniel Sorando emphasizes that, in addition to economic and educational segregation, there is a merely urban and spatial segregation in Madrid: “The lack of social housing, which is very high in Madrid, has caused us to live separately: the rich in one place and the poor in another.
There is no mixing, as it happens in other countries.
The shacks of Alcobendas and Boadilla disappeared.
Those of Cañada Real, no.
Everything good, big companies, work, private universities, goes north.
To the south are the sewage treatment plants or the incinerator”.
And he recalls that an unequal community, in addition to generating poverty in the long run and in the short run, carries with it multiple and varied social wounds, ranging from delinquency to depression.
Alberto Reyero, from Ciudadanos, was Counselor for Social Policies in the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso until, in October 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, he resigned due to discrepancies with the president regarding the fight against the virus.
He maintains that the PP "thinks that everything is solved with employment, and yes, but it is not everything."
He criticizes that opportunities have been lost to try to lower, for example, the price of housing.
Like with healthcare.
If the health system is not well equipped, it affects especially those who cannot afford private insurance.”
And he concludes: "Here we have suffered two very big crises and something has to be done."
The Cáritas report warns that there are currently nearly one and a half million people from Madrid in the category of socially excluded, 24% more than in 2018. Entering the list means that you are a victim of various circumstances: unemployment, poverty, difficulties with housing, education, isolation or social conflicts, among others.
José Castro, a social worker for the Municipality of Navalcarnero (30,000 inhabitants) is a witness to this avalanche of people in need.
“Right now we serve 3,000 families.
And I estimate that 70% have a job that is not enough for them.
The middle classes are being lost.
When they talk to you the first thing you see is that they are afraid.
An atrocious fear of the future.
Wendy Grguric: "The poor are workers like me"
Wendy Grguric is 43 years old, has an 11-year-old son that she raises alone, a salary of 1,000 euros from a travel agency that is reeling from the crisis.
She lives for rent.
She looks at the receipts with a magnifying glass.
She saves on heating and gas what she can, even if she gets a little cold.
She saves nothing.
She doesn't go on vacation.
She makes ends meet with just enough.
Any unforeseen event wrecks the domestic economy.
Last year she went to the Navalcarnero Town Hall to get help with the boy's books and to buy him some glasses that she needed.
Two weeks ago, the Minister of Education and spokesman for the Government of the Community, Enrique Ossorio, of the PP, when commenting on the aforementioned report by Cáritas at a press conference, sarcastically began looking for the poor of the region around the lectern.
“Well, where are they?” he wondered.
Wendy knows this: “The poor are not the ones from the shack.
The poor are workers like me”.
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