A review of the complaints of the people of Madrid about the dirt in the streets, which is the main source of complaints registered in the Transparency portal of the City Council, offers several conclusions.
One, that only 23 of the 131 neighborhoods of the capital are saved because garbage in the streets is not the first reason for complaint from their neighbors and those neighborhoods are concentrated in the highest level tourist areas.
Two, that the figures up to August 2022 have not changed substantially in the last four years, a sign that the problem persists and the current corporation is unable to remedy it.
And, three, that outside the M-30 and except for some point in the center, the complaints double, a sign that in those areas the dirt is greater or the neighbors are more sensitive to it.
It is not easy to measure the cleanliness of a public area, but there are data that allow us to at least approach the perception that the neighbors have of it.
Those mentioned above are figures of the notices that the people of Madrid make to the 010 service (via networks or by telephone) and that the City Council publishes on its open data portal.
Excluding the notices of removal of a piece of furniture from an individual or those of the change of a garbage can in a community, we have analyzed the almost 500,000 incidents reported from January 2019 to June 2022.
This map shows the percentage of notices related to dirt in each neighborhood.
It is a measure to get an idea of how relevant the problem is for the neighbors.
Neighborhoods outside the M-30 in the south and east of the city often double the figures found on the other side of the ring road.
The reasons can be many: because they are actually dirtier or even because the neighbors are more or less inclined to notify the City Council due to the lack of cleanliness.
The neighborhoods of Hellín and Amposta in the district of San Blas, and the nearby one of Ventas, in Ciudad Lineal, are the ones that present the most ads in the analyzed period.
Here 40% of the reported incidents so far this year are due to dirt.
If you walk down the avenues of Hellín and Amposta, you can see several cleaning workers working.
Above all, they collect leaves: "Here it always seems autumn," one of them comments with a smile.
The thing changes when wandering.
Mountains of leaves mixed with beer cans and other debris accumulate in the blocks between the blocks of houses.
One of the interblock zones in the Hellín neighborhood through which street sweepers do not pass.PPA
“I have called 010 (the municipal citizen service telephone number) 80 times, I have suggested to my neighbors that we organize ourselves into raids... At night you see the rats going from one place to another and the worst thing is that the children play here”, says Jesús Baraña, a resident of the Amposta neighbourhood.
"Sometimes they come when you call, they clean it one day, and they don't show up again for weeks," seconded his neighbor Víctor Cabrera, who explains that they organize to pick up, while pointing to a merchant who is precisely sweeping the entrance to his store. .
Alfonso Palomo, president of the La Vecinal de Bilbao-Pueblo Nuevo association in the Ciudad Lineal district, which accounts for many of the incidents reported by citizens, explains why some areas are excluded from cleaning: “In the previous cleaning contract , they forgot to include the so-called interblock zones, so they are not considered in the sweeper's route”.
Like many others, Palomo is confident that from September, when the new routes come into force, things will change and there will no longer be black spots on the map.
Park in the neighborhood of Amposta full of rubbish.PPA
The containers on the main streets are not overflowing, but even so, some residents choose to leave their waste next to it, on the ground.
Sometimes there are objects that should be left in a clean point next to a recycling container, such as an abandoned blender on Pobladura del Valle street.
“Pedagogy is also needed with citizens, it is useless for us to pass if later I see people leave garbage bags in the street or even throw them out the window,” says a cleaning worker while she drinks water.
Palomo, the neighborhood leader, also points out that "information campaigns should be carried out so that people know, for example, that by calling 010 they collect waste for free."
In the surroundings of the República de Panamá school, the playground is surrounded by cardboard boxes,
more cans and remains of water balloons mixed with mud on which flies flutter.
“Oops!
And today it's fine”, says Miguel, a neighbor who returns from shopping.
Announcements increase in the center
Moving from these neighborhoods towards the center of the city passes through the areas with the fewest complaints about dirt.
In the neighborhoods of Ibiza, Goya or Recoletos (District of Selamanca) as well as on the axis of Paseo del Prado and Paseo de la Castellana, notices for lack of cleanliness do not reach 20%, below the average for the municipality.
In some cases, these are areas highly frequented by tourists, and it is possible that there is a care to keep them clean.
In others, such as La Castellana, there are many more offices or work centers than in more peripheral neighbourhoods, while the low figures in the neighborhoods around the Retiro Park are probably due to the fact that a large part of their area is occupied by the park ( In this area, in fact, the biggest complaint is due to problems related to the BiciMad service).
Not all the interior of the M-30 is exempt from cleaning problems.
Two specific areas exceed the city average and are close to 30% between 2019 and 2022: Lavapiés and Universidad, both areas frequented by their bars, terraces and restaurants.
In fact, the center is where notices for dirt are increasing the most this year compared to what had been happening in previous years: with updated data as of June, the neighborhoods that are accumulating the highest percentage of cleaning complaints are University and Cortes (Center), Gaztambide (Chamberí) and Argüelles (Moncloa).
The notices for the coming months will end up indicating whether the cleaning will be, also in 2022, the main incidence for the people of Madrid.
So far there have been 68,185 warnings and the trend is not good: June 2022 (the last month with data) has been the worst month after July 2019, with even more complaints than during the Filomena snowfall.
Subscribe here
to our daily newsletter about Madrid.
50% off
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber