The homemade marijuana plantations have blown up the routine of 256 families in the Polígono Sur de Sevilla.
In the poorest area of the most humble neighborhood of the Andalusian capital, known as Las Vegas, more than 200 children have been without electricity since February 27 and suffer hygiene and nutrition problems.
“It is very hard because of the cold, there is no heater and my six children cry even for not having a TV.
They have even gone 12 days without bathing and sometimes I collapse psychologically”, admits Antonio Marín, a resident of one of the 14 affected blocks.
Children are the first victims of this blackout that clouds everything in the evening, including streetlights, but there are also a dozen
electrically dependent neighbors
with breathing difficulties who need the network to receive oxygen.
Lanterns and stoves help to fill the darkness and cook, but the apartments located from the third floor also lack water because there is no electricity to go up the slope.
While despair spreads in the neighbourhood, to repair the supply, the distribution company Endesa demands guarantees that the illegal connections to the wiring for the marijuana plantations will decrease and the Administrations (Government Subdelegation, Board, City Council and Commissioner for the Polígono Sur) they blame each other and pass the ball to Endesa as the ultimate party responsible for the solution to the drama.
“Students who don't shower at home suffer a lot and of course they lose concentration.
Some have skipped class, others have asked to go into the dining room to go home from school and other families have moved," explains María Peñalosa, head of studies at the Nuestra Señora de la Paz school.
The Infant teacher María Zubiría stresses: “In my class there are six children without light and they are more tired because they sleep worse.
You have to be on top of them."
Transformer caught fire in Polígono Sur on February 27, with garbage and cables in the air. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
A meter sealed by the neighbors in one of the areas affected by continuous power outages in the Three Thousand Homes. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
Amalia is one of the affected neighbors.
The situation is serious because it affects children who are already electrically dependent (respirators, etc.), who suffer from the lack of living without electricity in the Andalusian capital after the transformer that feeds the houses burned again on February 27.
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Neighbors affected by the lack of electricity in Tres Mil Viviendas, Seville.
In this part of the neighborhood, known as Las Vegas, only 42 residents out of 642 have an electricity contract in order and the three existing transformers have burned down due to power overload. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
Without light, Míriam washes clothes in her bathtub illuminated by a battery-powered lamp.
She is one of the affected neighbors. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
View of an area of the Three Thousand Homes where you can see cables between blocks of flats to share electricity. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
Area in the Three Thousand Homes of Seville affected by continuous power outages. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
Amalia and Manuel, neighbors affected by the lack of electricity in the Three Thousand Homes of Seville.
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A man walks through an area of the Three Thousand Homes in Seville, where 256 apartments have been living without electricity for almost two months. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)
With the streets full of garbage just before the cleaning services begin their task, last Wednesday Miriam Moreno explained on her balcony that in the absence of a washing machine she fills the bathtub to wash clothes, but it takes its toll: "Now I rub with the feet because my hands already hurt, and the clothes have been hanging out for four days because of the cold.
In addition, we charge our mobiles at friends' houses and buying daily is complicated to cook with so many children”.
At the back of his street, Oedipo Rey, among the garbage bags full of soil and plant roots, stands out the crater with four-centimeter cables severed from the remains of the transformation center that burned almost two months ago.
A few meters away, a building in a state of ruin, like a drain without nine walls, evokes the harsh images of war.
The phenomenon of narco-flats has exploded in the last five years and has spread due to the low prison sentences that those responsible carry and the difficulties of the Police in stopping urban plantations in flats without residents: it affects the Polígono Sur de Sevilla, but also to the northern area of Granada and the Pescadería neighborhood in Almería, confirm sources from Endesa, a distribution firm in the three Andalusian cities.
Since last September in Seville, four transformers that change energy to low voltage have burned, the last of them last Monday in the nearby neighborhood of Murillo.
However, the blackouts started two years ago.
The floors dedicated to marijuana plants – with up to 500 pots and consuming about 80 homes, according to the police – grow like mushrooms, overload the network and the fuses burn until they generate a fire that destroys the transformers, located in the middle of the street. .
Each fire involves an investment of 85,000 euros, but after the fire at the end of February, Endesa refused to repair it after alleging that it only has one client with a contract.
The rest, 255 families, are not registered as consumers and have never paid electricity.
Miriam Moreno, in front of her bathtub full of clothes.
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The neighbors reply that the Andalusian Board, owner of 1,438 apartments built in 1978 and on a rental basis, gave them the houses with the light already installed and that when they tried to register, Endesa replied that their cables were too old and that the central installation of the building had to be changed, a work that corresponds to the Housing and Rehabilitation Agency of Andalusia (Avra), of the Ministry of Development.
Last Wednesday dozens of cables launched by the neighbors crossed the sky of several streets to get light in their houses from other buildings.
Faced with the paralysis of Endesa and the Administrations, 104 neighbors have reacted and with a group of altruistic lawyers have denounced the deprivation of electricity for violation of fundamental rights before the Contentious Court 1 of Seville and before the European Commission for violation of the Directive 2019/944, which guarantees universal electricity service to all citizens.
In parallel, they have filed complaints with the Seville Prosecutor's Office, the guard court, the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno (PP), the Ministry of the Presidency, Avra and the Andalusian Energy Agency.
Sources from the Prosecutor's Office confirm that they will decide on the matter in the coming days.
Lastly, a neighbor has filed a civil lawsuit against Endesa for leaving him without electricity despite having a valid contract with the company.
"It is irrational and unreasonable that the proven existence of illegal electricity hookups and marijuana orchards in this area is used as an argument for the violation of fundamental rights," criticizes the lawsuit filed by the lawyer Alberto Jorge Revuelta.
The complaint before the organizations summarizes: “The absence of electricity supply occurs in the middle of winter.
It is not possible to preserve food.
It disables the mechanisms of articulated beds of the many disabled people who live in the blocks.
It makes it impossible to use breathing aids that work with electric current.
They impede to unbearable extremes the washing of bedding and personal use.
Remains of earth and marijuana plants, in the streets of the Polígono Sur in Seville.
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After almost two months of blackout, the Government Subdelegation in Seville plans to meet a "political" table with all the actors involved, but it needs two reports with the situation of the neighborhood that Endesa and Avra have not yet sent to it, sources allege of the Subdelegation.
The two technical “marijuana” tables, which have been meeting every three months since 2019, have not found a solution to the problem.
Polígono Sur is the neighborhood in Spain with the lowest average annual net income per inhabitant: 5,112 euros per person, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
It has 20% of its 30,000 residents at risk of extreme poverty, 25% school absenteeism, 60% school failure and 60% unemployment, according to the Commissioner for the Polígono Sur, a body created by all the Administrations in 2003. Two decades and three commissioners later, its indicators do not go up.
Endesa alleges that the solution is close, but that the installation of the transformer on fire depends on the technical reviews of the installations and repairs that the Board must carry out.
The Andalusian Government assures for its part that the inspections to complete its 64 buildings are advancing at a good pace, but that it cannot advance a compliance date to complete the task.
"The solution lies in an intervention by the central government to put an end to illegal connections and overloads," says Juan Carlos del Pino, general director of Avra, the agency of the Board, which claims to have made investments of 3.8 million in the neighborhood this legislature.
The problem is a hornet's nest that comes from very far away and despite the attempts of the Board's technicians to clarify the neighbors that it has as tenants, the census is still pending.
Given the power outages, 15 days ago several neighbors went to the Avra office in the neighborhood and threatened the nine workers, for which the Board closed the dependencies and transferred its employees to other dependencies.
The official landlord is no longer present in the neighborhood.
Building in a state of ruin in the Martínez Montañés neighborhood of the Polígono Sur in Seville.
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Endesa admits that its delay is excessive but complains about the high level of vandalism it suffers: “60 days without electricity are too many, but officially we do not have clients in the area”, company sources allege.
The commissioner for Polígono Sur, Jaime Bretón, believes: "My proposal is that Endesa gives light to residents with limited power while convincing them to ask for the social bond and make contracts."
From the Sevillian City Council, the director of the South District, Trinidad Camacho, blames the delay on the Board: "Everything has a procedure, but I don't know why the Board has not monitored the occupation of their homes."
Given the cross reproaches of the technicians and politicians, the residents have seen 44 years pass without much progress.
“The passivity of the Administrations is patent and now it is very difficult to fix in several days what they have not done in four decades”, censures Rafael Pertegal, spokesman for the Martínez Montañés association.
Rosario García, from the association We are also Seville, is even more critical: “There is no political will because they are interested in having a storage room for the ills of the city.
We have had a lot of patience and they only repeat programs that are useless.
We have seen one commissioner after another. What are they for if the situation is the same?”
The unstoppable rise of home marijuana cultivation
The rise of urban marijuana cultivation in the last five years has in the background the debate on the regularization of the use of cannabis, opened in the Congress of Deputies last September by the parliamentary partners and allies of the PSOE, but also by Ciudadanos.
While the socialists want to wait for the results of a subcommission to draw up a law, the narco-flats wreak havoc in three Andalusian capitals.
“You have everything: nationals and foreigners, Chinese, Romanians, Poles, Spaniards, primary and repeat offenders, all kinds of ages, women and men, entire clans… The cultivation of marijuana, the usurpation of empty houses and illegal hooking are widespread crimes ”, report sources from the Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office in the Andalusian capital, who underline as an incentive for the crime the low penalty it carries -between 1 and 3 years in prison plus a fine-.
Cables in view of the transformer that has caused the power outage in the Polígono Sur de Sevilla.
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The entrenched problem in the Polígono Sur de Sevilla is that in order to authorize the search warrants to the police, the judges usually ask for the identification of the residents.
And some apartments of the Board change tenants up to five times a year in a constant transfer in exchange for 20,000 euros, confirm several residents of the blocks where the plantations are concentrated.
They are not always empty, there are also elderly couples who fill the bedrooms with plants and move their beds to the living room to receive extra illegal income.
“The indoor
cultivation
of marijuana is a problem that affects the entire country.
However, the data does allow to differentiate a greater affectation of the South and Levante zone of the country;
perhaps for reasons such as climatic and soil conditions, as well as easy access to seeds and growth apparatus and equipment”, illustrate police sources.
Apart from the narco-flats, marijuana plantations have also exploded in rural areas and the Civil Guard and the Police carried out 303 operations with 13,000 kilos of drugs and 343 detainees, only in the first eight months of 2021 and in the province of Seville, triple that of the previous year.
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