What has happened so that seven neighborhoods in Seville have said enough after suffering power outages for years?
"Three deaths from heat waves," responds quickly Laura Cárdenas, spokesperson for Barrios Hartos, the neighborhood platform that leads the protests in the Andalusian capital to end the continuous blackouts, of up to 16 hours a day.
“The neighbors have verified how the complaints to Endesa are useless, nor the Andalusian Ombudsman, the City Council or the Board.
No one reacts,” Cárdenas complains with contained fury.
With temperatures of more than 40 degrees as usual this summer, more than 10,000 residents according to the platform -3,000 according to Endesa- are often without air conditioning, or refrigerators or electric respirators, they suffer dizziness in houses converted into ovens, and where the extreme fatal has been the death of three neighbors.
Desperation has caused the neighborhood occupation of two municipal civic centers and a demonstration in front of the Endesa headquarters that illustrates the paradox of living without electricity in the fourth largest Spanish city by population, with unbearable heat spikes that cost lives, due to the electrical network is too old and cannot support the demand.
“We have had four years with cuts in a row, and in winter you cover up and it goes away, but in summer you can't.
My two-year-old daughter and my mother have suffered from heat stroke at home, and Endesa tells me that it needs many complaints from the area.
I earn 590 euros, but I pay the electricity religiously”, protests Lydia Ruiz, 23 years old and a resident of the Torreblanca neighborhood.
In Catalonia, 390,000 residents of 29 municipalities and Barcelona suffered similar blackouts a year and a half ago,
Now in Seville there are already seven peripheral neighborhoods -Torreblanca, Su Eminencia, Padre Pío, La Plata, Polígono Sur, Pajaritos and Candelaria- to which affected parts of Bellavista and Pino Montano have been added, in a phenomenon that will continue at least until October given the deadlines that Endesa manages to straighten out the drama.
Neighbors survive heat waves with towels soaked in cold water on their backs, gas stoves, and sharing their weariness at community gatherings.
Because they pay their electricity bills, but sometimes nothing responds at home: neither the air conditioning, nor the ceramic hob or the refrigerator.
And the butcher shops in these neighborhoods throw away their goods when the cold line is cut.
The electricity company responds that the demand has soared this summer with temperature limits never seen before and that the responsibility is shared with the City Council, because the deadlines to undertake the works are often long.
And it adds a entrenched problem in the most deprived areas of Polígono Sur and Torreblanca: the narco-apartments with home-grown marijuana crops, whose lamps lit 24 hours a day burst the transformers in the neighborhoods.
However, the residents flatly reject that excuse because the cuts affect seven neighborhoods and not two, some of them without a trace of drug flats.
The platform accuses Endesa and the Board, which also blames drug trafficking for the blackouts, of committing a hate crime for treating their neighbors as criminals,
A neighbor and her dog, locked up in the civic center of La Plata and His Eminence of Seville. PACO PUENTES
“They are humble neighborhoods and the transformers are 60 years old, it has been patched up and now Endesa and the Board are absent.
We demand portable and provisional generators that allow us to live, the neighbors no longer believe the lies of some works that never arrive”, claimed Juan García, from Barrios Hartos, during the demonstration in front of an Endesa headquarters together with 200 people in a very tense.
"The Board has to take the step because they are responsible for this emergency situation, just as it happens when it rains too much and there are floods," he points out.
In the previous demonstration, the police arrested several people.
Now the platform is preparing a collective lawsuit against Endesa for violation of fundamental rights.
Soraya Sánchez got fed up this spring and hired an approved electrician to sue Endesa in court and thus demonstrate that she receives 1.7 watts in her house, and not the 3.5 that she has contracted: “I am unable to cook food and Very little power is noticeable in the bulbs, that the white ones turn yellow.
In addition, these voltage drops and surges damage appliances and then Endesa cleans its hands when you claim, even if the expert certifies it”.
She also shares the anger of Libertad Suárez, who gave birth eight days ago and denounces that she has her son "dehydrated" because she heats the bottles in the sun.
What caused the delay in renewing the network?
“We had already studied the materials and the new transformation centers, but the times are also set by the Administration to execute the facilities.
The works were planned, but the circumstances have not materialized”, explains José Recacha, responsible for the electricity network for Endesa, a distributor in the Andalusian capital.
Two neighbors who demand a solution from Endesa for the continuous blackouts they suffer.
PACO BRIDGES
The Councilor for Equality, Citizen Participation and District Coordination, Juan Tomás Aragón, denounces the company's inaction: "It is clearly a lack of investment by Endesa."
A spokeswoman for the electricity company responds that its investments have not stopped and that before October a plan of 40 million will be completed with 12 new transformation centers.
Seville has 3,500 transformation centers and Endesa assures that only between 25 and 30 present problems, and that those that affect more neighbors will be resolved before the end of August.
The Sevillian mayor, Antonio Muñoz, has criticized the energy multinational for causing an “unsustainable situation”: “Supply cuts are not justified in a city that is committed to innovation.
Who has to solve it and invest is Endesa.
The profit and loss account of many companies is striking when compared to this situation that is inappropriate for the 21st century”.
Endesa had a net ordinary profit of 734 million between last January and June, 12% less than in the same period of 2021, but since the start of the energy crisis it has added one million customers.
The Board has thrown balls out by blaming the problem on drug dealers and the Government Subdelegation, on which the police depend, denies the criminal link and ensures that the problem is that "the facilities are obsolete and investments were needed."
Meanwhile, the forecast is that the mercury will continue to rise this month and the residents will continue without power in most neighborhoods.
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