GABRIELA LÓPEZ,
Sir[a] Centre Coordinator
Can you imagine waking up with a wall built in just a few hours at the door of your house? Having to study with candles because you have no light; having to walk in mud because your street has no asphalt; or fearing for the life of your baby, who can't get warm. Can you imagine?
Today we want to tell you a story of resistance, violence without blows and darkness. A lot of darkness.
In our commitment to documenting the impact of rights violations on people, we have carried out a new expert investigation in the Cañada Real Galiana, with the aim of assessing how the power cut has affected this population. Since October 2020, several sectors of this neighbourhood in Madrid have been deprived of electricity supply, being forced to resort to different alternatives to subsist, such as firewood, generators, candles or lanterns, among others.
As a result of this expert work, the report “La Cañada Responde”, published by the Community Action Group (CAG). Our aim here is to make suffering an exercise of rights, giving it meaning and pointing the finger at those who cause it.
In the process, we have found a community full of dignity, but severely damaged and fractured by the accumulation of abuses it has been suffering for more than 20 years by different administrations. Because resisting wears you down, and living without light is a direct attack on life.
What are the consequences for people of living without electricity for more than two years? How exhausting is it to have to face the daily challenge of preserving your food or medicines? What are the consequences of living for so many years under police siege and with limited access to health and education?
Before the power cut, only 11% of the Cañada Real neighbourhood claimed to be in need of mental health care. Today, that figure stands at 75%.. Bureaucratic walls, institutional indifference, tiredness, media stigmatisation and continued social rejection over time end up provoking despair, helplessness, sadness and a lot of anger in people. Living in a city that normalises this situation is disheartening and this is the perfect example of how institutions can even take away the illusion of a future.
We have met generations of grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters who fight to defend the garden where the first ones planted a walnut tree that is now more than two metres tall. La Cañada is a neighbourhood full of belonging and dignity, but run over by multiple forms of violence and exhausted by so much suffering. For this reason, it is important to continue documenting, denouncing and dignifying their struggle. With this report we wanted to do all that.
Thank you for following us and supporting our work,
”In the process, we have found a community full of dignity, but severely damaged and fractured by the accumulation of abuses it has been suffering for more than 20 years by different administrations».
Gabriela López Neyra
Sir[a] Centre Coordinator