# Madrid: Cañada Real, 15 km large of illegal buildings and slums



## Hinx (Nov 27, 2005)

Lately in Madrid is much talk about this. To start you explain who are the Cañadas Reales (royal ways). Royal ways are paths designed for the transit of animals from different parts of Spain, is forbidden to build them. In Madrid we have one that passes through the center of Madrid (in the Puerta de Alcalá) whose section and was suspended for at the time, and another that passes through the east of the city, known as the Cañada Real Galiana



















The section of the Cañada Real Galiana passing through Madrid is full of illegal buildings and shacks for 40 years. The reason is: this section even when away from the city was within the municipality of Madrid most. It was the responsibility of the municipality to avoid it, but as the council was far ignored the issue. The problem has grown over the years and currently 50,000 people living here. When the new quarters of Madrid have been growing and we do neighborhoods to this area is when the city realizes the enormous challenge that this implies and is now very difficult to solve.


In this section there illegally urbanized everything from luxurious mansions to huge filthy slums. The section near the landfill of "Valdemingómez" is currently the biggest drug hypermarket in Spain.


We will see with parts:



1 - Coslada (translated into english as "repository" :crazy: :










This section belonged to the municipality of Madrid. The city of Madrid is located al west, has industrial zones at north of Coslada and zones without urbanity at south of Coslada; but also has a bit southeast of Coslada). Currently this segment belongs to Coslada since both municipalities bartered land: Madrid gave this space and Coslada gave an area at west of the town to Madrid to build the "Olympic village". Red line old municipal boundary, black line new municipal boundary. The Madrid city council did nothing to prevent the spread of Canada because this disturbs Coslada and Madrid didn´t worry with them. Currently this section in Coslada is in process of being legalized, and the quality of housing not much different from what is around Madrid.



2 - El Cañaveral










This section belongs to the municipality of Madrid is located between what will be the new neighborhoods of Madrid: El Cañaveral (left) and Los Cerros (right). In this installment is illegal and luxury mansions and a hotel: crazy:. This area should be crossed by several streets between the two new neighborhoods, plans to be listed as a park, but no one knows what will happen to it.



3 - Rivas










This tract borders with what will be the future "Los Ahijones" district of Madrid and the railway of high speed train. Part of this section belongs to the municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, which has declared its intention to demolish all the houses when has permission. That if, has said he will do it only with large mansions, while the gypsies living in slums will give them a flat of rehousing. This is the problem of Spain for many years: Gypsies who do not work and only engage in drugs and illegal street trading, houses give them free while the rest of the citizenry has to pay.


4 - Covibar










This stretch runs glued to the urbanization "Covibar" of Rivas-Vaciamadrid. Cañada is the border between the two municipalities (Madrid and Rivas), but few years ago was part of Covibar within the municipality of Madrid. Covibar was a neighborhood built by cooperative unions (Covibar = Cooperativa de viviendas baratas, cheap housing cooperative). A few years ago and Rivas Madrid agreed to land swap for all Covibar belonged to Rivas, because membership of this part to Madrid supposed Rivas could not serve their neighbors and it was very distant to Madrid. Past division in red, black current.


5 - Valdemingómez










This area runs between the A-3 and the municipality of Getafe (which alone has prevented further spread of the Canada and through which the problem is not twice that is today). It belongs to the whole municipality of Madrid and runs alongside Madrid landfills and waste incineration plant. This is where almost all the drugs sold in Madrid. Along with the A-3 is the slum of "El Gallinero", home to dozens of families of Romanian Gypsies engaged to steal drivers of cars on the freeway when stopped in traffic.




In total there are 15 kilometres of illegal buildings and shacks of all kinds: There are from rich areas to poor areas, live Spanish Gypsies, Moroccans, South Americans, Romanians, etc. There are luxury mansions to slums, shops, a hotel, warehouses, industrial plants, drug businesses of all kinds, etc.. The police don´t come here and this area has become the "City without law". The government of Spain has expressed concern that this area could be installed terrorist cells of Al-Qaeda.


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## Ni3lS (Jun 29, 2007)

Could you help me out with the thread title? It's kinda messy don't you think? No clue what's going on if only looking at the title. The title looks more like a citytalk/urban issue thing.


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## Hinx (Nov 27, 2005)

^^

I do not understand what you mean. What happens in the Cañada Real could be understood as the formation of a illegal neighborhood of informal settlements.

What he had not explained before is that: this stretch of Cañada may be legalized, but only for homes that have a minimum quality. Could be understood as a process which is taking in Brazilian slums. We even have a broad area of Cañada Real, if legalizing be fully integrated into the city because they are no longer on the periphery but surrounded by neighborhoods.


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## Atmosphere (Mar 15, 2009)

Look at the other threadtitles ^^ It's always the cityname (in caps) and then what is going to be build. 

It unclear in the title what is going to be build in Canada Real. Are all the slums going to be demolished?


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## Hinx (Nov 27, 2005)

^^ Ok, the title must be MADRID: Cañada Real, 15 km large of illegal buildings and slums.


All constructions on this zone are illegal. But it´s very difficult to resolve it. One solution can be legalice some houses that have quality of construction and integrate them in the new districts of Madrid. There are illegal houses that are mansions of 1000m2 built area!.


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## Atmosphere (Mar 15, 2009)

But there are no specific plans to demolish those slums or build something new?


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## Anderson Geimz (Mar 29, 2008)

I don't see slums?


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## MikeVonJ (Oct 3, 2009)

^^*Yes, where are the slums you said at the title of the thread?*


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## Raffo (Feb 11, 2010)

Any pictures?


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## Hinx (Nov 27, 2005)

It´s a "lineal city" of slums.


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## dennol (Sep 11, 2002)

For pictures just google 'cañada real galiana'

I saw some slums in Sevilla when I was there recently. Ofcourse the people who live there are a very small percentage of the Spanish population and such shantytowns are definitely not representive for Spain as a whole but I was amazed that there are still areas like this in the European Union in 2010…


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## Nolke (Oct 25, 2003)

^^ don't know what you saw exactly, most probably non-inhabited informal installations, but in the case that there were people living in there, it isn't unusual for gypsies in Spain to create self-built ghettos in order to avoid conflicts with the non-gypsy population, or to force the authorities to give them a house for free, even though they've enough incomes to get one (in fact many of them can afford expensive cars). It's a peculiar behaviour that Spanish gypsies have developed (notice that the concentration of gypsies in Andalusia and in Madrid/Barcelona metro areas is almost exceptional in Western Europe) taking advantage of the authorities' weakness. Romanian gypsies that arrived recently have other problems though, and they've been also building some "informal settlements" during the last years. Maybe if you can remember and tell me what you saw and where you did it I could clarify this issue. My point is that there're virtually no Spaniards living in slums against their will, remember that after all Southern countries are the heaven of public money squandering.

In the particular case of the Cañada Real Galiana, it consists mostly of illegal housing, with only some tiny sectors consisting of what we could call slums, some dedicated to drug selling and others inhabited mostly by gypsies. If you wanna talk about discipline in urban planning, now that's another issue.


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## Jim856796 (Jun 1, 2006)

Which of the buildings are illegal, the slums themselves or the new buildings in the planned zones that are going to be replacing those slums?


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## gincan (Feb 1, 2006)

dennol said:


> For pictures just google 'cañada real galiana'
> 
> I saw some slums in Sevilla when I was there recently. Ofcourse the people who live there are a very small percentage of the Spanish population and such shantytowns are definitely not representive for Spain as a whole but I was amazed that there are still areas like this in the European Union in 2010…


Outside of the cemetary there is a permanent shantytown called El Vacie with some 100+ gypsy famlies. At the southeast entrance to the city is the infamous "Las Vegas" neighbourhood with run down apartment blocks.


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