The residents of the Latina district have been fighting for years with the Madrid City Council to bury the highway that does not allow them to live in peace.
The non-stop noise and omnipresent pollution have been two burdens that residents thought they would release with the council's announcement of the burial of the A-5, in the Extremadura section of the highway.
The work, which will cost, in principle, 347 million euros, will be carried out on a 3.7 kilometer stretch where more than 50,000 residents of Lucero, Batán, Cuatro Vientos, Campamento and Aluche live.
But the original project presented by the City Council two years ago differs from the one announced in February.
The new one contemplates the exit of the tunnel 700 meters earlier, which leaves more than 12,000 residents of Aluche and Campamento without the benefits of this work, according to Andrés Piñeiro, president of the Campamento neighborhood association.
This Sunday, those affected have cut off two lanes of the A-5 to ask the City Council “to execute the project it presented in February 2022,” the organizers explain in a statement.
DEMONSTRATION ON MARCH 17 IN Pº DE EXTREMADURA
We will take to the street to ask @MADRID that the mouth of the A5 underground tunnel exit past Avda. de los Poblados.
Aluche and Campamento also want a solution to traffic problems.
Come.
pic.twitter.com/Un85CZzypL
— Campamento Neighborhood Association (@AVCcampamento) March 9, 2024
Those excluded from the burying of the A-5, where 130,000 vehicles circulate daily, arrived before noon at the point where the highway converges with the Boadilla de Monte highway.
Piñeiro carried the megaphone.
Minutes before the road was cut, he reminded the neighbors: “We have been listening to a burial project for five years until Los Poblados Avenue.”
The request is that the work “go from Avenida de Portugal to after Avenida de los Poblados, because there are no longer homes there.”
The City Council has justified that the burial will be done in two phases.
The first - that of discord - will reach Illescas Street, although originally it covered a longer stretch.
The second, which is part of Operation Camp and whose execution depends on the central Government, should include, in the eyes of the Consistory, the burying of the A-5 to Avenida de los Poblados.
However, the Ministry of Housing has clarified that this section has never been included in Operation Camp.
In short, the City Council has thrown the ball to the central Executive, which maintains its position of only financing the works starting from Avenida de los Poblados.
The residents of Aluche and Campamento invade the A-5, on March 17, 2024.JJM
At the demonstration, the highway closure was delayed a few minutes due to the delay of the police unit that escorted the march.
The batucada did its thing, the beating of the drums gave confidence to the protesters who went from tens to hundreds when the clock struck twelve.
The neighbors, worried about the wait, decided to act on their own.
First, a handful of protesters timidly invaded one of the four lanes of the busy highway, an act that incited the crowd to occupy the entire highway.
A wave of applause thundered to celebrate the stoppage of traffic, while the cars began to back up.
At that moment the police arrived, clearing two lanes for vehicular traffic and leaving the remaining two lanes for the march.
The 600 attendees, according to the Government delegation, covered the 700 meters of the unfulfilled promise, to the rhythm of harangues such as "the City Council is suffocating Campamento" or "they have deceived us with this underground."
At 12:30 the march stopped in front of the Ángel González Library, the exact point where the new project tunnel ends.
Andrés put the megaphone to his mouth: “Neighbors, this is where the tunnel would exit, as you can see there are homes on both sides.
The City Council has to fulfill its promise for the health and well-being of the residents of Camp and Aluche.”
The concentration applauded once again.
A neighbor who accompanied the march from her balcony vented her fury against a pot that she hit repeatedly with a spoon.
A resident of the Campamento neighborhood supports the demonstration against the new plan to bury the A-5.JJM from her balcony
Begoña Fernández, 68 years old, lives at 610 Paseo de Extremadura, right at the point where the tunnel exit has been planned.
Fernández knows well the harms of living on the banks of the A-5.
She has learned to measure carbon dioxide particles with a device that she has installed at home and has reinforced the points where pollution is filtered with a double window, which she only dares to open “a few hours only” to ventilate. home.
“I can't use the terrace,” she explains, “she, I can't put plants or anything.
My house is always dirty, because it is covered in black dust all the time.
Plus, you leave the house and breathe in smokable air.”
Fernández highlights another side effect of shortening the underground: if the road continues above, residents have to cross below, through the underground tunnels that connect them with the rest of Madrid.
“Every now and then they rob us and it floods when it rains,” explains this woman who declares herself doubly affected.
“In addition to being excluded, we feel tremendously harmed, because in addition to the noise pollution, the tunnel is going to have a chimney effect, that is, we are going to swallow all the gases,” she highlights.
For her: “Everything has been delayed because we are an area without purchasing power.”
In the background, the demonstration chants: “Cars below, people above.”
And then “This doesn't happen in the Salamanca neighborhood.”
The residents of number 610 Paseo de Extremadura join the protest against the Madrid City Council's new plan to bury the A-5.
In front and supporting the cartel, Begoña Fernández.JJM
The march ended around 2:00 p.m. at the intersection of the A-5 and Los Poblados Avenue.
It was the last activity in a series of interventions that have taken place in recent days, such as the virtual campaign to collect signatures on Change.org, which is already close to 2,000 endorsements, or the pedagogy tables with neighbors to explain the new Almeida project.
In the final manifesto, read by Piñeiro, the neighbors have defended: “It has to be buried because this is an injustice.
Cities must be increasingly greener, more livable, more capable of making us happy and improving our lives and health, not worsening them.”
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