For a month there has been a new commissioner in the district of Puente de Vallecas.
A busy square.
240,000 inhabitants, almost 15,000 crimes a year, scene of one of the worst plots of sexual slavery, drugs and gangs that are remembered in Madrid.
Nothing that was published in the media about the Sana police operation, which plunged into the underworld in which several protected minors lived, locked up in drug brothels and used to distribute drugs, was foreign to the neighbors.
"That is what we experience here every day," says Luis Sánchez-Grande, president of the Kaskoviejo VK association.
This neighborhood group prepared this Thursday a
crime tour of the
main hot spots in the neighborhood for the new
sheriff,
Ignacio Álvarez
,
and for the head of security in Madrid, the Government delegate, Mercedes González.
The first part of the tour is by van.
It starts at Peña de la Atalaya street.
"We are entering clan territory of the Gordos," announces the guide.
It is a historical clan with several of its members arrested for drug sales.
In this same street a 41-year-old man was stabbed a month ago.
If he searches the newspaper library, this street appears many more times for the same reason.
“Look at this house,” says the neighborhood leader, pointing to a block.
Two very young Latin-looking boys remain on guard and vigilance on both sides of a door.
“Everything is sold there.
They are there to
give the water
—notify— if they see something suspicious.
They have us on file as
persona non grata
”, warns Sánchez-Grande.
The van allows discretion.
One can wonder how they are so sure of what they say, but it would not be the first time that their information has been very valuable to researchers.
The last operation against the network took place three months ago just a few blocks from it and the police said that alerts from nearby residents had been crucial.
More information
The underworld of Madrid where 10 exploited minors were trapped
A few minutes later, the so-called "blue house" appears, an entire block of squatted houses.
The Smurf blue color can be seen in a facade gnawed by neglect with hardly any glass.
“Dog fights, cockfights, people fights...”, indicates Sánchez-Grande, a Madrid native from Castilla-La Mancha who has been in the neighborhood since 1977 and assures that he travels several kilometers on foot every day within the perimeter of the district.
Many of these are problems that have always been here, he laments, that have come in waves.
Puente de Vallecas has the second lowest per capita income in Madrid, at 9,500 euros, according to the INE.
A little further on, another squatted house.
Another of the neighbors who prefers that her name not be published tells the delegate the day they entered the corrala that is right in front of her house.
“I called the police right away, but when they arrived they said there was nothing they could do now,” she says.
The motorized route ends at Avenida del Monte Igueldo.
Kicking off the street begins.
This is the epicenter of many of the district's problems.
Here was, for example, one of the hairdressers that the police registered as a place where minors were abused in Operation Sana, carried out at the end of last year.
A road almost divided into closed shops and betting houses.
Some of the usual bars, greengrocers and tobacconists also survive, among them, the one that appears in
La laguna de Vallecas
, one of the guides of this particular tour tells as an anecdote.
As soon as she got out of the van, a hotelier came over to talk to the delegate and told her about the problems of insecurity at night.
One of the attendees at the meeting with the commissioner and the delegate shows the map of narco-flats that he has drawn up. Olmo Calvo
Neighbors point to more narco-flats and even a heroin workshop.
And more things.
They point out the place where there was a brawl, the courts that have become a bottledrome, the park that you cannot go through at night... The detail of the criminal activity they have is surprising.
The commissioner takes advantage of the conversations to justify himself: “It is one thing to know where the drugs are.
Another is to prove it, to obtain an entry and search warrant, to convict them...”.
Stop at the Carlos Ubierna herbalist, on the Puente de Vallecas boulevard.
In an environment charged with the smell of incense, he relates the nightmare he has been living for months, when, as he explains, the Trinitarios gang pointed him out.
Ubierna says that he had already had some problems with gang members or sympathizers.
“One day the police supported a few people against my shop window to search them and I told them: 'Let them know that I didn't call.'
Shortly thereafter he found his business sign vandalized and graffiti on his car that said TNT (Trinitarians).
All of this was denounced.
Carlos, the owner of the Aurora herbalist who denounces insecurity and attacks on his establishment, explains the situation to the Government delegate, Mercedes González (in the center).
bald elm
Merchants like Carlos Ubierna recount the context behind the headlines.
Puente de Vallecas has been included from the beginning in the anti-gang plan of the Government Delegation in Madrid and has been the scene of multiple attacks.
The latest, the stabbing this week of a 14-year-old boy outside his school.
The authors, also minors, were arrested this week.
Final stop, assembly at the association's headquarters, next to the Nueva Numancia metro station.
Two long hours to summarize the reality of the district.
"We are little heroes," says a participant, who narrates how they "play" by taking photos of drug dealers and clandestine brothels to send evidence to the police.
Another participant even shows a map made by himself in which he indicates the main drug sales points in a part of the neighborhood and a WhatsApp conversation with a policeman, in which he tells him how a leader of one of those networks has returned to the neighborhood shortly after his arrest, shouting threats at the neighbors.
"Snitches, you are going to eat a
shit
," says this neighbor who threatened them with the alleged criminal.
Meeting of the Government delegate, the district commissioner and representatives of the Kascoviejo association to talk about the problems of the neighborhood. Olmo Calvo
Neiren Castillo, a Dominican neighbor, intervenes to claim tools for the youth of the gangs: "These boys can be recovered, they have a future, we must give them an alternative to only feel valued within a gang."
Another participant supports him: "When I was young there were also gangs, they were not as violent as now, but they had something in common: they are kids who have nowhere to drop dead."
The delegate insists that there are 500 agents dedicated to ending the gang problem.
Neighbors also complain about the lack of communication with the police officers in the district.
"Here the commissioners come and go," complains an assistant.
"What do you bet that I retire here," responds Commissioner Álvarez.
“We take his word for it”, they conclude from the public.
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